


Too Real for One Little Heart

by pearlcaddy



Series: Like a Cat Playing With a Ball of Twine (That You Call My Heart) [2]
Category: Julie and The Phantoms (TV 2020)
Genre: Aged-Up Character(s), Alternate Universe - College/University, Alternate Universe - Roommates/Housemates, Alternate Universe - Soulmates, Angst with a Happy Ending, Banter is My Love Language so It's Jukebox's Too, Drinking, F/M, Friends to Lovers, Living!Phantoms AU, Luke and Julie Co-Owning Cats, Mention of Grief/Mourning, Minor Alex Mercer/Willie, Pining, The Disaster Kids become Disaster Adults, brief panic attack
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-02-17
Updated: 2021-02-27
Packaged: 2021-03-12 21:21:56
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 2
Words: 46,242
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/29515950
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/pearlcaddy/pseuds/pearlcaddy
Summary: It takes Luke one year to fall in love with Julie and two years to find out that she’s his soulmate, but eight to actually tell her.Because Luke Patterson may not know a lot, but he knows that he will never be Julie Molina's soulmate. Emphasis on the “Luke Patterson may not know a lot.”Soulmate AU where people find out who their soulmate(s) are when the universe decides they need to know (and the universe has a flair for the dramatic).
Relationships: Julie Molina/Luke Patterson
Series: Like a Cat Playing With a Ball of Twine (That You Call My Heart) [2]
Series URL: https://archiveofourown.org/series/2124969
Comments: 222
Kudos: 451





	1. Take a Deep Breath And Hold It In

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Title from “Special” by Jukebox the Ghost  
> Chapter title from “Hold It In” by Jukebox the Ghost  
> (I’ve written too many fics lately without Jukebox, so we’ve got some catching up to do)
> 
> This probably makes sense if you haven’t read the [original fic](https://archiveofourown.org/works/28967451) first? I think they read better in the order they were posted, but you’re a strong independent human and you do what you want.
> 
> As always, this was meant to be a short-ish oneshot, but then I decided that I wanted to _just briefly_ go back to how they met, and whoops what is brief?
> 
> Also, for everyone who is as baffled as my partner is by the US terms for college students:  
> • Freshmen - 1st year undergrad university student  
> • Sophomore - 2nd year  
> • Junior - 3rd year  
> • Senior - 4th year
> 
> Playlist for this fic is [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3HfrWPEmPHd7Fpng7o6Ab1?si=s5rj0-oIRYucdrBt5fnASA)

Luke isn’t sure whether to thank or blame the music school student services office for his relationship with Julie, but it definitely plays a bigger role than he thinks it should have.

Maybe they would have gotten off to a better start. Or maybe they wouldn’t have become friends until years later. But regardless of the impact, there’s no denying that the relationship they do have all stems back to his college work study job.

Because the week before his sophomore year starts, the lack of students on campus means that the office is slow, and Luke decides to satisfy his need to snoop and his need for busy work by digitizing the admission committee’s handwritten records from last year’s auditions. And, okay, technically he’s not _supposed_ to actually read the audition reviews, but it’s very hard to digitize files and not see what’s written on them. Also, he’s not trying hard to not read them. Sue him, he’s curious about the incoming freshman class. Who got in by the skin of their teeth and who is _good_. Who should he be paying attention to?

(Luke staunchly refuses to think about the time he got too curious and read his own file. "Unpolished, but teachable” haunts him if he dwells on it for too long.)

(Okay, he’s dwelling. Unpolished? Like a kid cutting his fingertips on his first guitar? Teachable?? Like a misbehaving puppy???)

(It’s fine. He’s _fine_.)

Luke’s taking mental notes of some names, but nothing is terribly exciting until he gets to the vocal students. Because Caleb Covington was on the vocal admission committee last year. Covington is certifiably a dick, which makes him terrible to have conversations or classes with, but does make his reviews very entertaining, in the same way that listening to Gordon Ramsey talk about other people’s cooking is entertaining. Most of his comments are vicious, incisive paragraphs about “talentless hacks” with uncomfortably visceral language and unnecessary metaphors. (“Voice like a donkey masturbating in a hurricane” is a phrase that Luke could have gone his entire life without reading, but there it is, forever burned on his brain.)

The closest Covington comes to a compliment is two words: “my studio.” It’s an indication that a singer has promise, and it’s him laying claim to having that voice in his music studio. The equivalent of spraying on his territory, telling the other vocal teachers that this student will be his student. There’s never a compliment accompanying it. The claim is enough.

But then Luke gets to the last form in the stack and he freezes at the sight of something he’s never seen before.

“stellar—my studio.”

One word shouldn’t have that much power, but on boring shifts, Luke has gone back through _years_ of these forms. He’s read Covington’s vicious paragraphs tearing apart singers who later go on to win Grammys, fill stadiums, and become legends. He once heard Covington describe Florence Welch’s voice as “barely adequate.”

“Stellar” is a bomb going off in Luke’s head, and he _needs_ to hear this voice. He glances at the name of the admitted student at the top of the sheet and commits it to memory.

“Julie Molina.”

And this is where the trouble starts.

* * *

The thing that surprised even Alex and Reggie when they first got to university is the way that Luke fills his schedule to the brim with as many classes as he can, and that he audit classes and sneaks into big lectures of classes he isn’t taking.

He’s not a good student by any means—his work is usually dashed off in an hour before class starts, if he even finishes at all. He prides himself on having the lowest possible passing grades for his degree. Luke doesn’t want to earn his teachers’ praise—what possible value could a letter on a piece of paper have for him? No, Luke wants to learn everything about music. He’s gonna spend four years bathing in musical knowledge until it soaks through his skin and never leaves his soul.

It’s a fancy way of saying that he keeps trying to insert himself into classes that he doesn’t really belong in, and Professor Harrison is one of the only professors who is willing to put up with him. Which is how he ends up sitting in on her Experiencing Musical Genres class that first semester of his sophomore year. He’s not expecting anything terribly interesting from the first week, because it’s syllabus week and everyone knows that that means nothing worthwhile will happen, but then Harrison takes attendance and calls out “Julie Molina,” and Luke almost breaks his neck whipping his head around to find the answering “Here.”

He’d noticed the girl when he first walked in—partly because she’s really cute, and partly because she seems to be shrinking in on herself, tugging her hat down over her face like a spy trying to conceal her identity. Now he tries to re-assess her in the light of knowing that she’s Julie Stellar Molina. What musical style does she tends towards? What is her vocal tone? Her vocal range? Wait, scratch that. Soprano. Covington refuses to teach anyone but sopranos, because Covington is a selection of gross musical biases stitched together in a human suit.

In the background, he’s dimly aware of Harrison explaining the purpose of the class—something about expanding their musical horizons by trying out genres they haven’t explored before—but all his focus has shifted to this girl.

Okay, Luke. Make a good first impression. Be chill, be respectful.

And maybe he could have been, but they get put in the same four-person group to do a cover of a folk song. And everyone else in the group is primarily an instrumentalist, so as Luke tries to divide up the parts, he nods at her and says, “And you’re taking the vocal part.”

But she cuts him off, shaking her head aggressively. “No, I’ll do piano.”

“But aren’t you in Covington’s studio?”

She skewers him with her sharp gaze and he tries to shrink back in his seat. He’s not sure what facial expression says, “I’m not creepy, I just know that information off the top of my head for normal and casual reasons,” but that’s the face he’s trying to make.

It doesn’t seem to work. “What about it?”

“You’re a singer, so…”

“And I’m not singing, so…” There’s an edge to the “so,” cutting like a knife, and he opens his mouth to retort.

The actual piano major in their group groans, “She can take the piano part, I don’t care, let’s just move on, dude,” but Luke Patterson does not “move on.” Luke bulldozes and he…

… honestly, even years later, and even with Julie’s help, can’t piece together exactly what he said. All he remembers is continuing to insist that she should be the one singing, her losing her temper and yelling at him, and Harrison separating them into different groups with the exhaustion of a kindergarten teacher. 

When he tries to explain what happened, Alex and Reggie can only shake their heads at him. (Alex suggests that he be calm around Julie, but… like, serious suggestions only please.) And for the first half of the semester, he keeps pushing things. It’s not that he means to—he comes in every week with great intentions. Be chill, don’t push her about singing. But then she does something outrageous, like refuse to take a vocal part, and he can’t _not_ comment. 

She’s a stellar musician. No real musician would give up music. Why is she being like this??

He doesn’t get his answer until midterm week, when Covington barges into the student services office to have a loud, impromptu meeting with one of the academic advisors, Ms. Lessa. It’s not that Luke is eavesdropping on purpose (he is, but it’s also not his fault that Covington is so loud), but he catches snippets. Something about a grieving freshman in Covington’s studio who can’t sing. A freshman whose therapist got her back into playing piano, but has yet to get her back to singing. A freshman whose mother died a few months before the academic year started and left her completely disconnected from her music.

Luke’s gut shrivels.

It’s one thing to know that he’s irritating. Alex tells him that at least once a week; he’s accepted this about himself. But pestering a grieving girl makes him an asshole, and he really hates assholes.

His complete failure to act like a human being around this girl is especially infuriating because there are moments in class that make him think that they could be good friends. Like during blues week, when Carrie tells Mrs. Harrison that she’s going to be performing “Crossroad Blues by Eric Clapton,” and Luke and Julie correct her in unison: “Robert Johnson.”

Julie’s eyebrow lifts in surprise, scanning him like she’s never seen him before. He offers her a soft smile, and this time when Julie announces that her partner for the week will be singing and she’ll be playing, he manages to keep his mouth shut. 

And maybe that’s why his next interaction with her isn’t disastrous.

He’s only ten minutes into his shift when Lessa escorts a student out of her office and over to the front desk. “Luke will get you sorted.” He recognizes the student as Julie just as Lessa adds, “Studio transfer.”

His heart sinks. So Covington kicked her out.

Julie’s eyes flick from his face to the floor, and his heart sinks further. Crap, she’s _embarrassed_ that he’s the one witnessing this. He’s made himself that much of an antagonistic force in her life.

As Lessa walks off, he snatches the right form and passes it to Julie as casually as possible, trying to project with posture alone that studio transfers are casual and routine.

“Thanks.” She doesn’t take her eyes off the form as she grabs a pen and moves to sit down with it. Then she stops short, swinging back toward his desk. “Um, it says I need the professors’ studio codes? I don’t know those.”

“Uh, I’ll get that for you. Just a second.” Technically, he’s supposed to fill those in after she’s done with the form, but if she lingers by the desk, maybe he can figure out something not-douchey to say to her. Literally anything to try to repair this. As he clicks through the office computer, he says casually, “Covington’s a dick. You’re better off.”

“Wasn’t my choice.” Her voice is clipped.

Okay, not off to a great start. Might as well dig in. “Apparently he spends the whole first semester deciding whether he thinks you’re worth anything. If he likes you, he leans hard on you for the next three and a half years. Overworks you and tries to railroad your career plans. If he doesn’t like you, he basically ignores you. So, if you’re in his studio, there are no good outcomes.”

He chances a glance at her, and she’s finally looking his way. Up close, he can see that her eyelashes are clumped, her mascara slightly smudged, and her eyes shining. Crap. She was crying during her meeting with Lessa. This has really hit her hard.

“I’m switching to Harrison’s studio. Know any gossip about her?” she asks, a forced lightness to her voice.

“Meets you where you are. Good at reading how much people can and want to be pushed. She’ll be good for you.” Julie flinches. Crap, that sounded patronizing. “Uh, you generally, not you specifically. She’s good for, um, singers.” She only teaches singers. What is he even _saying?_ He giggles nervously, which… seriously? and rubs the back of his head.

A smile fights to be unleashed from the corner of her mouth. “The studio codes?” She holds the sheet out to him.

“Uh, you’d better write them in. My handwriting’s shit.”

Lessa chooses then to pass the front desk again, and she fires a withering glare at him. “Mr. Patterson, what have we said about your language?”

“That it puts an approachable face on university admin?”

“Try again.”

“That I will put a quarter in the swear jar?”

“Try. Again.”

“That I will stop doing it.”

She rolls her eyes and stalks away. But Julie giggles at him, so he’s calling it a win. Charmed is maybe a strong word, but the gentleness of her face is genuine at least. “Wow.”

“Shut up, I’m professional.” But he tosses her a soft smile, aiming for friendly. She leans on the counter, the same way Alex and Reggie do when they try to hang out while he’s at work, and the friendliness of the gesture sends a giddy wiggle through him.

“Professional people don’t say shut up. I feel bad for you.”

“How’s that?”

“You’re definitely one of those people who knows how cute you are and it’s been really bad for your personal growth.”

“Oh, think I’m cute?”

Her face freezes, like she’s trying to press pause on life and scramble for a rewind button. “Uhh… the studio codes?”

Normally he would push it, but this feels like a chance to move them to better ground, so in spite of how everything inside him is screaming not to let it go, he does.

Maybe this is the peace offering that can start to make up for all his assholery.

* * *

And maybe it works, because next week, when Harrison is sorting them into groups for country music week, she glances at Julie. “Could I partner you with Luke?”

Her answering “He’ll do” makes him feel more victorious than it should.

He doesn’t sprint to the seat next to her, but he definitely moves too quickly.

Julie scans the list of suggested country songs in front of her, but wriggles her nose in distaste. “You have any preferences when it comes to country?”

“I’m not a big country person.” He tries to keep his voice light—the whole point of this class is to challenge their musical assumptions, and he’s trying to be open-minded—but mostly he doesn’t want to alienate her if she’s a country music fan.

“What _is_ your music of choice? Blues?” It’s an unnecessary question, so it makes him glow. She wants to know about him. And she remembered the Robert Johnson thing.

“Rock.” But he can’t let her assumption go unacknowledged, wants to nod to their tiny bonding over Robert Johnson even if it’s not the focus right now. “But I know where my genre comes from.”

It’s the right thing to say for once—the corner of her mouth quirks up. “Rock.” Her eyes run down his arms, taking in his crimson-and-gold school cutoff and his jean chains, and then roll back up to his face. He feels warm. Is it warm in here? “Yeah, should have guessed rock. You in a band?”

“Sunset Curve.” _Tell your friends_ is on the tip of his lips, but he bites it back. Reggie pulls it off. Whenever Luke tries to say it, he sounds like an overeager child bragging about his lemonade stand.

“You any good?”

“Most epic band ever.”

Her answering smile and nod are an eerie replica of the “Sure, Jan” meme. Apparently they’ve reached the limits of polite conversation. Her tone snaps back to business. “Okay, if you’re not a big country person, let’s stick with something country-lite.” Her eyes tick to him. “There’s the obvious. How do you feel about her?”

“Everyone seems to either love or hate Taylor Swift, but I’m just neutral? I don’t know if I’m allowed to have that opinion.”

“I’m also neutral.”

“Good, there’s two of us.” Her small smile feels like a giant beam, and he definitely smiles back too much. Why can’t he just be chill around this girl? “Um, I don’t hate the Civil Wars?”

But she clocks his tentative tone. “You sure about that?”

“They’re good. I’m just not used to… feeling apathetic about music. Normally I’m…”

“Enthusiastic.”

“Yeah.” He scans her face. Can he apologize? Does she want him to apologize? Or does the apology stumble them into territory that’s too personal to her, especially in the middle of a classroom?

Misinterpreting his pause, she chuckles. “Do you want to give an impassioned speech about music?”

“You go to the same school as me. You can’t pretend you don’t love music.”

The smile stills on her face, more mask than genuine. Eventually she shrugs. “I’ve never understood anyone _not_ loving music. It’s like not caring about oxygen.”

“Exactly!” He leans onto his desk, eager. He’s seen her play in class, and she’s good. Great even. But her playing is cold and detached. Like part of her is pretending that she’s not there. Right now, even if her voice is cautious and small, there’s a passion underneath it. A long overdue glimpse at Julie Stellar Molina. “Music is everything. Nothing connects people like music. Like, even when you can’t find the words or can’t talk to someone, a song lets you have those conversations. When nothing else works, music does. How could anyone not love that?”

Her face is still again, but this time there’s a haunted look to her eyes. Crap. He probably stepped in some feelings thing again, didn’t he? “Sorry, I’ll be calm.”

She looks down at the list of proposed songs, smiling to herself. “You’re like the inspirational coach in the third act of every sports movie.”

“Full eyes, clear hearts, can’t win.”

He messes up the reference on purpose, hoping she’ll correct him, but she doesn’t take the bait. “Okay, why don’t we both think about some songs we might be able to do, and we’ll meet up tomorrow to pick something?”

“I have a practice room booked at Gateway at 1? We could meet then?” Okay, he booked the practice room for Sunset Curve, but he’ll happily reschedule band rehearsal if it means making things right with her. “And, uh, I’ll take the vocal part of whatever we pick.”

The corner of her mouth slides up into a smile that finally takes over her full mouth. “Sounds good.”

* * *

Luke doesn’t know what he expected of their rehearsal, but definitely not Julie barging in, flushed and glowing, an unshakeable beam refusing to leave her lips as she slaps sheet music in front of him. He reads the title.

“‘Poison & Wine?’ Isn’t this a duet? I guess we can—”

“—sing it as a duet.”

He stares at her, taking in the sheer, unadulterated joy on every inch of her face. “Are you sure?”

Her head bobs up and down eagerly, the grin growing as she bounces on the balls of her feet. “I’m singing again.”

There’s a story there, but a story he hasn’t earned the right to hear. Even though every part of his curious, boundary-averse self is desperate to prod her about what changed, he knows better now, so he tries to smile a normal amount as he says, “Congrats, that’s amazing.” He nudges the sheet music toward her. “Show me?”

She picks up the pages, eyes him for a moment, takes a deep breath, and then starts to sing.

Years later, Luke will admit that he doesn’t remember much about the Experiencing Musical Genres class. Nor can he honestly say that he learned any new appreciation for country music. He remembers two things: every single note to “Poison & Wine,” and Julie. Because the instant she opens her mouth, her voice fills the space and sucks all the air out of his lungs. Like she borrows it to sing, creating a sound so powerful and beautiful and pure that it inscribes itself onto his soul.

“Stellar” doesn’t cover it. But it’s a start.

* * *

A couple weeks later, Luke is in the main hall of Doheny library, working later at night than he wants to be, when a familiar figure sits at the other end of the very long table he’s using. But if Julie notices him, she doesn’t give any indication. The days of sniping at each other in class are over, but they’re not actually friends. More awkward acquaintances who now nod if they pass each other on campus.

He’s hyperaware of her presence. Outwardly, he’s looking at his laptop, but his brain keeps drifting to his peripheral vision, to the girl with the voice of an angel sitting seven chairs away. His distraction only gets worse when Julie’s friend starts whispering to her. He’s not trying to listen because he does have some understanding of boundaries, okay? But the whispering gets louder, and it’s at the point where his brain can’t not take in the words being spoken, even if he actually were focusing on the essay in front of him.

“Flynn, I promise I can study by myself,” Julie sighs. “Please go and have a good time.”

“Sisters before potential hookups.”

“That doesn’t rhyme, so it’s probably wrong.” Julie’s exasperated quip almost pulls a laugh out of him, and he bites his lip to swallow it.

“I don’t want you walking home alone. You might get murdered.”

“I really don’t think I will?”

“Jules, if you get murdered because I abandoned you in your hour of need—”

“—I’m really not in need—”

“—then I will never forgive myself. It will mess me up for life.”

Luke can’t help himself—he glances over at the girls. Julie’s eyes dart briefly… not _at_ him, exactly, but close to him. So she _does_ know he’s there.

“I promise I won’t get murdered.”

“You can’t make promises like that. It’s out of your hands.”

“Okay, I’ll call the campus escort thing. I won’t walk home alone.”

Her friend—Flynn, apparently—crosses her arms and levels Julie with a look. “You’re not going to call them, are you?”

“No, I’m not.”

“Then I’m staying here.”

“Sweetie, calm down. It’s like a ten-minute walk.”

But Flynn wiggles further down into her seat, unmoved, and Julie’s shoulders sink. Her eyes tick over to Luke and yeah, okay, fine, maybe he’s shaking with laughter and calling attention to himself. “Luke,” her voice cuts through the hushed library, “you going to be here much longer?”

He was basically ready to leave, but sure, he can stare at his laptop just as easily here as he can in his dorm room. “Why do you ask?”

“Would you mind,” Julie sighs and rolls her eyes at the ceiling before pulling them back down to him, “walking me home later?”

“Sure thing, boss.”

Her friend pops out of her seat as she collects her things. But her eyes aren’t on her belongings. Instead, they run over him like a body scanner at an airport. “ _You’re_ Luke?”

His head bobs in a confused nod. Flynn’s tone is unreadable, but significant. Either Julie has spent a substantial amount of time complaining about him, or…

“Flynn.” Julie cuts out a warning, eyes widening with embarrassment.

Interesting.

Flynn answers Julie’s worry with a devilish smirk, which only drops off her face when she points a stern finger at him. “Don’t let her talk you out of walking her home, and don’t murder her.”

“Cross my heart.”

That scanning look returns to her face. But this time it ends with… not a smile, exactly, but the same slightly relaxed expression of an airport agent after a scan comes up clear. She turns the finger on Julie. “I knew it,” she sings.

“Shut _up_ ,” Julie hisses, looking around frantically at the other patrons, but refusing to glance anywhere near Luke. “This is a library.”

“And you’re full of shit. Byeeee.” Flynn sweeps out of the hall and Julie’s eyes immediately snap back to her laptop, face scrunching up like she’s trying to bury whatever expression is struggling to live on her face.

It’s a couple more hours before she starts to pack up, just as Luke’s at the point of slamming his face repeatedly into the keyboard. He throws his things together in an instant and almost stumbles in his rush to get to her end of the table.

“Where you heading?” he asks.

“You really don’t have to,” Julie insists. “Flynn gets… overly concerned.”

“Yeah, but now if you get murdered after I said I’d walk you, I’ll never forgive myself. It’ll mess me up for life.”

She rolls her eyes, but there’s no edge to it. “Parkside.”

It is, indeed, probably too close for Flynn’s worry, but he just smiles. “Should be able to get you there in one piece.”

She hugs her books to her chest with a nervousness that reminds him that, as much as Flynn is being a tad dramatic, the night campus is large and intimidating and, in places, poorly lit. For all her bluster, Julie looks like she may actually feel more comfortable with him by her side. As long as his presence isn’t unwelcome.

Her teeth gnaw at her lip. “Where do you live?”

Literally the opposite direction. “Not Parkside, but I like to walk. C’mon, let’s get you home.”

At first, the walk is silent. In spite of the low-key drama of the last couple months, they don’t really know each other, and the darkness of the night hanging over the campus makes it feel like they’re totally alone. More alone than they felt in a practice room. Or maybe it’s just that being alone for a school project is miles different from being alone on a walk home. Nighttime has always made Luke feel like more things are possible, and right now he feels the possibility of night pulsing through him like a song. A song that makes it very hard for him to ask something mundane like _what’d you have for lunch today?_

She cracks first. “What were you working on?”

“Uh…” “Working” feels like a strong description for what he was doing, but sure. “Essays for music theory and marketing.” She raises an eyebrow, and he adds, “Business minor.”

“Huh.” He waits for the inevitable. Most people just snort, but he’s pretty sure that she’s the type to actually comment. “Okay, no offense, but you don’t seem like a business minor.”

And there it is. “I think it’s only offensive _because_ you said no offense?”

“Shut up,” she huffs. “Am I wrong?”

He debates giving the polite shrug off answer, but there’s something about her that tugs honesty to the surface. He wants to be friends with this girl, and honesty is a good way to forge friendships, right? “My parents didn’t want me to come here for music. So I told them I’m doing a business major and a guitar minor.”

“Why couldn’t you just lie?”

“Tuition bill doesn’t say what your degree is, but it does say which schools within the university your tuition is going to. So my parents know I’m a Thornton music student and a Marshall business student. They’ve just… got the details wrong.”

Her eyebrows raise, but he can’t read the details of her face in the shadows. Is she impressed? Disdainful? “Devious” is all she says.

“I’m not really good at devious, so I dunno that it’s gonna work much longer. Just hoping I’m too far into the program for them to pull the plug at that point.”

He drags his foot along the pavement, hoping the scraping sound adds a casual apathy to his words, but her gaze is steady, not easily tricked. “What if they _do_ pull the plug?”

“Then I drop out.”

She fumbles her step, eyeing him with… ugh, is that pity? Then her eyes clear. “I’m sorry they’re not more supportive. They should be proud of you.”

98% of the time, he’s excessively confident in his abilities. But sometimes, like now, when he’s stumbling along in the presence of Julie Stellar Molina, he’s all too conscious of that damn audition review. Unpolished, teachable. Maybe his parents would be supportive if he were stellar. He rubs the back of his head, aiming for casual. “Maybe someday.”

But her eyes rest on him a bit too long, like she can see through his attempt at casual. He wants to squirm, but she changes the topic. “Essays going okay then?”

He snorts and shakes his head. “I hate essays. They’re a waste of time.”

“How’s that?”

Parkside Apartment is fast approaching on the road up ahead, so he hops up onto the narrow curb that circles a long, decorative garden stretching toward the student dorm. He tries to balance as he walks, placing one foot in front of the other, holding his arms out like he’s on a tightrope. Anything to make this journey take longer. “Okay, so, I love learning. Like, I wanna cut open my skull and pour facts about music into my brain.”

“That’s not how learning works.”

Sticking his tongue in her direction, he doesn’t take his eyes off of his feet. “But essays and tests and shit? It’s just trying to prove to them that you paid attention in class.”

She jumps onto the curb in front of him and starts walking backward, eyes on her feet. “No, it’s about you synthesizing the material for yourself.”

He falters, staring at her. Her backwards movement is easy, graceful, like a figure skater sliding on ice. Is this gonna be their thing? He does something, and she riffs off of it and does it more impressively? He can live with that. “‘Synthesizing the material’ sounds like a fancy way of saying you’re a kiss up.”

But she’s not phased, keeping her eyes on her feet as she steps confidently backwards. “The way my theory TA put it: everything you learn in class is them handing you a bunch of puzzle pieces, right? The essay is you putting the pieces together, learning how _you_ can make them fit. It’s you making that knowledge your own, deciding what it means to you. Yeah, you have to do it for class or else you fail, but think of the final essay as your diary entry about the class.”

She darts her eyes up to him for a moment, wriggling her face slightly like she’s embarrassed she talked for so long. But there’s something about her passion that makes his heart skip; she’s miles from the girl who played piano like she’s not in the room, and enthusiasm suits her. He smiles back, and he can _feel_ that the smile is too soft and too fond, so thank god his foot slips and he’s temporarily distracted by the need to steady himself.

Once he’s resettled on the curb, he shoots back, “A diary entry I’m writing for my TA to grade.”

“Okay, a _letter_ to your TA.”

“’Dear Valentina, you tried really hard, but I don’t give a fuck what a musica ficta is. All the best on your PhD. Sincerely, Luke.’”

She laughs, eyes twinkling at him. “That’s surprisingly polite for you.”

“I’m not gonna be a dick to the TA. TAs are underpaid and overworked.”

“Fuck, are they?”

She’s about to step off the end of the curb, so he skips forward to catch her forearm, bringing her to a stop. Eyes wide, she stares at his hand like she’s never seen it before. He quickly releases her and shrugs, carrying on like nothing happened.

“So are the adjuncts. Did you not know that? Get woke, boss.”

They’re crowded together on the end of the curb, and he can almost feel her breath on his face, and the golden glow of the lights outside Parkside light up her face and…

 _Oh fuck_ she’s pretty.

He knew she was pretty, but in a passive way. An objective fact that he would have mentioned if someone had asked him to describe her in ten words. ~~Like Reggie and Alex did.~~ Right now, it’s far from passive. It’s like a declaration of war on his senses.

He’s definitely standing way too close, but she doesn’t move away. She smirks up at him, her voice coming out hushed and flirtatious. “Big words from someone who doesn’t know what a musica ficta is.”

Her proximity is leaving him dizzy enough that all he can do is repeat himself, matching her tone. “I don’t give a fuck what a musica ficta is.”

Narrowing the gap between them, she leans forward, her gaze strangely heated for someone who doesn’t like him that much. “‘All the best on your BM. Sincerely, Luke.’”

She tilts her chin up, a clear invitation. He could kiss her right now. From the way she’s looking at him, kissing might progress to other stuff that he really wants to do with her. But the light catches in her hair, making her glow, and he doesn’t just want one night with her. And there’s no way that kissing her right now leads to anything more than one night.

So he raises an eyebrow and fakes confusion. “BM? Bowel movement?”

The desire vanishes from her face so quickly that he could have imagined it, and she rolls her eyes as she hops off the curb. “Bachelor of Music, you dork. The degree you’re getting?”

He bounces to her side, their steps on the flat pavement quickly swallowing the remaining distance to Parkside. “They’re giving me a degree? Seems fake.”

“Definitely a mistake on their part.”

She slides her keycard through the card reader at the door and flashes him a smile over her shoulder. “Thanks for the walk.”

He shoves his hands in his pockets, bites his lip, and nods. “Thanks for not getting murdered.”

The image of her disappearing into the dorm under the soft glow of the night sticks with him more than he thinks it should, sustaining him through Alex and Reggie’s teasing about him taking the long way home. He’s not sure what any of it means, or whether it’s going to change anything between him and Julie, but the next night, he’s back in the library trying to treat his essays like diary entries and she slides into the chair across from him. “How do you not know what a musica ficta is?”

It takes substantial effort to keep his smile contained to a normal level of happiness, swallowing the bubbles of joy in his throat that her easy presence causes. “Wanna explain it, boss?”

“I really do—it’s been bugging me all day.”

And she does. He still doesn’t give a fuck what a musica ficta is, but her enthusiasm is infectious enough to get him to write one of his better essays.

* * *

Their friendship isn’t instantaneous by any means. They don’t have a class together next semester and they never exchange phone numbers, so they spend the rest of his sophomore year only vaguely in each other’s orbit. If they’re both at the library, or at the Ground Zero performance café, they’ll share a table. If they’re both at a party, they (as the people who drink least in their respective friend groups) gravitate together as everyone else becomes progressively drunker and more annoying to talk to. But they don’t hang out on purpose. It’s all accidental proximity.

He wants them to be better friends, but he doesn’t know how to manage it. Getting back into singing again is a long and slow road for her, a road he doesn’t understand and keeps trying to shove her down too quickly. For every moment of fun and banter that they share, there’s an equal but opposite moment of tension and sniping. The kind of arguments that never really resolve, because they don’t know each other well enough to give the heartfelt apologies that the situation warrants, so there’s just an undercurrent of resentment to all their conversations. He doesn’t know how or if they can ever move past that. Maybe this is all it is. Occasional flirting in random public places.

For all that she’s a fun part of his life, she’s not a big part of it, and they still don’t know each other that well. She’s never even seen Sunset Curve perform. And can anyone really know Luke without having heard him in his element?

That doesn’t change until Ground Zero’s last open mic night of the school year. Sunset Curve are slated to go second to last, which Luke thinks is probably correct. They’re basically the headliners. Everyone in the crowd is lucky for their presence.

It’s probably their best performance of Now or Never all year. There’s something to the relief of finals and essays being done, with the promise of a whole four months of peace, that adds fire to his voice and his fingers. There’s an energy to his performance that’s been absent all year (and he tries to shove down the voice that whispers, _It’s wasted on this small space_.) He keeps closing his eyes to sing and losing himself in the music, so he’s surprised when they reach the bridge and he opens his eyes to find Julie hovering by the back wall.

In the moment before she realizes that he’s looking at her, he gets to appreciate her honest reaction to them. Her head bobbing to the rhythm, her fingers tapping along with Alex on her arm, the grin on her face. Then she notices his eyes on her and her smile slips into something more aloof.

Nah, too late for that. He shoots her a wink. Head shaking in disbelief, her face scrunches up in embarrassment. But as the song finishes, he keeps darting glances at her, and… yeah, she likes their music.

As soon as the sweaty trio of boys stumbles off stage, he steers them towards the milkshake bar at the back of the café. Subtle proximity to Julie. Total chill. But she brushes past them, heading for the stage.

The real headliner.

As soon as the guys finish placing their orders, he throws his arms around them and spins them to face the stage. “Watch this.”

He’s never really seen Julie perform before. In class, she kept her performances small, as they all did. Losing yourself to the gusto of a big number feels awkward in a cramped classroom with a professor grading your every move. But on a stage? The room begs for your all.

She unleashes something—a Florence + the Machine cover, he thinks—but he can barely pay attention to the song itself. He’s entirely focused on the way she throws herself into the notes, sings to the heavens, dominates the room with the piano and her voice. A tiny girl exploding like a musical bomb to bring an entire café to their knees. And on her face, the most peaceful bliss he could ever imagine. The contrast settles in his gut. She’s a powerhouse, a wrecking ball, a goddess. And she does it all with a gentle smile, like music sets her soul right.

A smile like the one he wears when he sings.

When she finishes, Reggie and Alex cartoonishly spin their heads to stare at him. “ _That’s_ Julie Molina?” Reggie gapes.

“Shit, and she talks to you? With that voice?” Alex claps him on the back as he retrieves his milkshake.

Okay, ouch.

True.

But still. Ouch.

Julie bounces off stage, like she didn’t just perform a musical miracle, and starts to weave her way toward her friend at the back door. But her eyes land on him, and she changes course.

“So you weren’t wrong about your band,” she announces as she sidles up next to him.

It’s been months, so while he can imagine he said something absurdly egotistical, the exact words escape him. “How did I describe us?”

Her casual shrug morphs into a smirk. “Guess you’ll never know.”

This _girl_.

“Well, you know the rule about openers.” She shakes her head. “They can only be half as good as the headliner.”

He gestures at her to drive the point home, and she grins, sliding closer to him.

“I don’t think that’s an actual rule.”

“Definitely was tonight.”

The air feels thick between them, their eyes refusing to uncouple until he slips his gaze cautiously, but pointedly to her lips and pulls them back up. A shy smirk pulls over her mouth in response and—

“Hi, I’m Reggie.” Reggie appears at Luke’s shoulder, loudly sipping a milkshake. 

Alex hovers next to him, at least having the courtesy to look embarrassed. “And I’m Alex.”

Technically, they’ve met before at parties, but the guys have always been pretty drunk, so this is probably the fourth time they’ve introduced themselves to her. Julie raises a bemused eyebrow at him, but then casts a warm smile at his bandmates. “I’m—”

“Julie!” Flynn calls from the door.

Julie jerks her thumb over her shoulder. “That. I should go, but it was great meeting you.” The same smile gets flashed at his friends again, but it morphs into a shy gnaw on her lip as she drags her eyes back to him. “Um, have a good summer, Luke.”

“You too.”

He watches as she strides over to her friend, who pulls her into a hug with a “You were amazing!”

Reggie shoves Luke’s milkshake into his hand, drawing the guitarist’s attention back to his bandmates.

Alex raises an eyebrow at Luke. “Huh. I thought it was one-sided. Is this a _thing?_ ”

“What? No, it’s no-sided.” 

Reggie snaps a finger gun at Luke. “You know what your ship name will be? Juke.”

“Reg, we’re real people, not fictional characters. You can’t ship us.” He swings his guitar case onto his back, hoping to project an air of casual.

“It would be weird for people who don’t know you to ship you. I know you. I’m allowed.”

“Alex, can you please tell Reggie—”

“Not Juke,” Alex hums. “Jukebox.”

“GUYS.”

Reggie shrugs and takes another long pull of his milkshake. “Don’t blame us. _Sparks_ were flying.” He waggles his eyebrows suggestively at “sparks.”

Luke can feel a blush creeping over his cheeks, but he staunchly pretends that his face isn’t bright red. He’s uncomfortably reminded of middle school, when anyone with a crush giggled that they hoped their crush would get the soulmate sparks for them. That childish desire for the universe to tell someone to be with you so you don’t have to ask. The kind of thing a twelve-year-old hopes for without understanding the long-term implications or really anything about the soulmate system.

He’s never had that. He spent all of middle school loudly telling everyone that music was his soulmate, until his mother snapped that that wasn’t how soulmates worked. Ever since, he’s had trouble caring about the idea. If he’s honest, he’s always assumed that he won’t have a soulmate. How could anything in the world be more integral to his soul than music?

So why on earth does Reggie using the word “sparks” to refer to Julie make him feel like there are rogue butterflies in his stomach?

He shakes his head, more at himself than at Reggie. “What are we, in sixth grade? I’m probably never going to see her again.”

* * *

He wonders idly over the summer if he _will_ see her again, but he writes it off as unlikely. Or if he does, it’ll be what it has been—casual run-ins with no greater consequence to his life. But there is still part of him, the part that gets a little too giddy whenever he sees her, that whispers hypothetical scenarios to him, trying to script lines of dialogue if he runs into her at the grocery store, or an ice cream shop, or a party. 

The scenario that actually happens is one he hasn’t prepared for at all. The week before the new academic year starts, he and the guys are at brunch at a boutique breakfast restaurant near campus, because Alex is convinced that fancy pancakes will help Luke get over his current writers’ block. Which has translated to Luke sitting at the long, crowded bar table and ignoring his bandmates and his food as he all but growls at his notebook.

“You know these seats are in high demand, right?” a wonderfully familiar voice asks. Julie slides into the empty bar seat next to him, beautiful and relaxed and grinning at him as the waiter hands her a menu.

He can feel that his smile is too big, but he can’t seem to shrink it right now, especially when she grins back.

“Ignore him,” Alex tosses out. “He’s in one of his tortured artist spirals.”

Flynn hops into the seat next to Alex, across from Julie. “Ugh, he gets those too?” She shoots a pointed glance at Julie.

“I do _not_ have a tortured artist spiral,” Julie insists.

“Jules, you locked yourself in the studio for a full sixteen hours last week, and your dad and I had to break in and force you to eat.”

 _Oh_. She’s like him. A kindred spirit.

Julie crosses her arms and shrugs, the same way he does when the guys judge his spirals. “The chorus wasn’t going to write itself.”

“You write too?” Luke asks, hoping his voice doesn’t come out too eager.

“Sort of? I should probably be looking for a writing partner. I think I work best with other people,” she admits, sipping at her water quickly like it’s something to be ashamed of.

He tips the notebook towards her. “You wanna take a look? See if you have any thoughts?”

Fingers already reaching for the notebook, Julie smiles shyly. “Can I?”

“Please.”

Julie’s eyes slide gleefully over the page, glazing over like she’s playing the song in her head, her lips moving to unsung words.

He probably wouldn’t have been able to take his eyes off of her, but Alex’s silent judgment has always made a very loud noise. The drummer stares at him, mouth falling open as he looks pointedly from the notebook to Julie to Luke.

Okay, yeah, so Luke doesn’t let Alex or Reggie have free rein over his notebook until he feels like he’s got a solid draft.

But, whatever, that doesn’t mean anything.

“Um, Jules?” Flynn clears her throat. “Shouldn’t you look at the menu first?”

“Just order me whatever,” Julie replies vaguely, before pointing Luke’s attention to the page. “I think the first verse overstays its welcome. What if you end it after the ‘find the spark’ and then jump right into the pre-chorus?”

Luke immediately leans over, as if looking at the page will let him hear it better in his head. “But then the transition is off. I guess go up on sparks instead of down?”

Julie shakes her head. “Sustain the note. End the verse where the pre-chorus starts.” She hums it for him quickly.

“Fuck yeah.”

“Oh my god,” Flynn groans. “There’s two of them.”

Julie sticks her tongue out at her friend without raising her eyes from the page. “Okay, now about the chorus…”

Alex, Reggie, and Flynn bond enough over their sheer exasperation that brunch becomes semi-regular, with their friends usually shaking their heads as they try to eat pancakes and Luke and Julie inevitably burying themselves in his notebook or some kind of musical discussion. Sometimes after brunch, the two of them grab a free practice room at Gateway to actually get the sound of something on an instrument, or head to the library to capture some of their discussions about music theory into essays. Alex, Reggie, and Flynn all claim to study better with the noise of a coffee shop around them, so it quickly becomes Luke and Julie alone in the library, studying better with silence.

(Admittedly, Luke often just wants silence so that he can play the sound of his own half-written songs through his head without interruption, but sure. Studying too.)

At first, he’s confused by how quickly their joint friend group forms. He would have pictured Julie as someone popular, drawing people to her like a magnet. Far too busy to just suddenly absorb a new, time-consuming friend group. When he finally voices the thought, she shrugs. “I had a bunch of friends freshman year, but turns out they were proximity friends. Now that we don’t live in the same dorm… Why, you sick of me?”

“Nah, you’ll do.”

She rolls her eyes, but turns back to her notes with a poorly concealed smile.

It’s not smooth sailing by any means. Sometimes he’s too quick to dismiss her suggestions, and sometimes she gets her back up, too convinced of her own ideas. She’s still easing herself back into performing, and sometimes he pushes too hard, trying to sign her up for open mic nights when she doesn’t feel up to it. And she’s much better at studying than he is. He tends to get bored after fifteen minutes of not talking to her, and devotes all his energy into drawing her away from her books.

Which is when The Incident happens.

They’re nearing the end of the semester, and Julie has been ignoring him for ages.

Like, at least forty minutes.

So he nudges her foot under the table.

She cuts him a glare. “I’m studying.”

“Whyyyy though? You know this stuff backwards and forwards.”

“But I need to prove that to the professor. And so do you.”

She turns back to her laptop, so he nudges her foot again. Without moving her eyes from the screen, she shakes his head. So he slips his foot up to her ankle, slowly wriggling his toe against her skin through the fabric of his Vans.

Still not moving her eyes from the screen, she stiffens and bites her lip. “Will you please focus?”

“I am focusing.”

“On your _work_.”

“I can multi-task.” When her dubious eyes raise to his, he grabs the nearest notebook and opens it in front of his face, pretending to read from it.

She rolls her eyes, but turns back to her computer. He inches his foot higher up her calf, tickling his toe against her. Again, she stiffens, this time letting out a high-pitched breath that she morphs into an exasperated huff. She cuts him a glare, but he winks at her over the book. Those winks have worked on other people, so obviously they’ll—

“You’re not as cute as you think are.” She drags her eyes back to her laptop.

“But I am cute?”

“You’re not hideous.”

“Not hideous? Careful, boss, you’ll make me swoon.”

“Like it’s hard? You swoon easily.” Her voice is distracted—she’s getting sucked back into her work.

“Only for you.” He tugs his toe up to her knee, and her eyes skitter distractedly across the screen before she catches his foot. The pleasant warmth of her palm through the shoe undercuts her sass. 

He thinks that’s the end of the game, but then she gently swirls a fingertip around his bare ankle joint and his whole leg jerks. His eyes fly to her face just in time to catch her wicked grin, even though she’s ostensibly still focused on her screen. “You’re too easy,” she murmurs.

“Again, only for you.”

Her eyes slide to his, and the air feels thick with the weight of four months of flirting. (Okay, sixteen months.) The flirting has gotten more intense and less deniable lately, like they’re hurtling closer and closer to something inevitable, and maybe now is that moment.

In the years to come, the narrative as Luke tells it to himself is that he is about to ask her out. (The reality is that he probably would have balked at the last minute for weeks to come.) But in his head, he is about to open his mouth and ask her to get dinner with him, romantic styles. Finally testing whether she’s interested in translating their flirty vibes into something concrete and real.

And then a blonde guy in a letterman jacket sidles up to their table. “Molina, did you take any notes last Friday?

Julie’s gaze snaps to the newcomer, and a shy smile that Luke’s never seen before melts her lips as she tosses Luke’s foot away from her knee. It slaps loudly on the marble floor, echoing harshly in the quiet library and vibrating painfully up his leg.

“Uh, yeah, did you need them?”

“If you wouldn’t mind. I was kinda hungover during that lecture. Totally spaced.”

A nervous giggle bursts out of her lips. “We’ve all been there.”

Luke shoots her a look because… Julie hasn’t. Neither of them has. They’ve talked repeatedly about how they have imposter syndrome because neither of them has ever been drunk enough to be hungover in the morning, and it makes them feel like failed college students. But she cuts Luke a very brief, sharp look, like she’s begging him not to correct her. The same look Reggie does when he embellishes to someone he’s trying to pick up and thinks Luke is about to be honest.

Luke shrivels back in his chair. _What_ is happening?

“College, am I right?” The guy unnecessarily adjusts the guitar case he’s wearing on his back. The sight of the instrument sends an unpleasant grumble through Luke’s heart. It’s not like he thought he was the only guitarist that Julie knew, but yes he did. “Um, can I borrow your notes?”

“Yeah, of course.” Julie giggles again and double tucks her curls behind her ears. Another gesture Luke has never seen her make. She turns to her backpack, then shakes her head. “Wait, actually, I only have them on my computer.”

“Right, cause it’s the 21st century,” Luke drawls.

She cuts him that look again, like he’s intruding. No no no, what is happening??

“I could send them to you?” she offers.

“Or we could get coffee and go over them together?” The guy gestures his thumb vaguely in the direction of the library café.

A third nervous giggle. “Right now?”

“No time like the present, right?”

“I’d love to.” Oh no, now her smile isn’t just shy. It’s also soft and giddy and he’s never seen _that_ expression on her either and—

“Didn’t you have a test to study for?” Luke tries to point out, but she’s already slipped her laptop into its case.

“I already know this stuff backwards and forwards.” She flings her backpack over her shoulder. “Ready to go, Nick?”

The guy nods and curls his hand gently around her elbow.

“See ya around, Luke,” she shoots at him before they walk off.

The Incident gives Luke whiplash. He thought—okay, whatever, it doesn’t matter. Obviously he was never a serious thought for Julie beyond a friend she sometimes liked to flirt with. She’s never acted like a nervous girl with a crush around him. Always supremely confident, bantering with him and batting away his nonsense without pause. Apparently that’s not what she’s like when she’s interested in someone. So he misread the situation. Good that he found out before he said something he couldn’t take back.

The more Nick hangs around Julie, the more Luke catalogues their differences. Nick is shy, awkward, quiet, passive, and serious. Luke is… well, okay, he’s definitely awkward too, but it’s a different brand of awkward. Nick stumbles into his awkwardness. Luke rushes into his. They couldn’t be more dissimilar.

If Nick is her type, Luke never had a shot.

He tries to remind himself of that whenever he sees the two of them together, especially the first time Nick uses the word “girlfriend” to describe Julie. Jealousy is an ugly emotion and Luke needs to burn it away anyways, but it’s also utterly baseless. He never had a chance with Julie. How could he ever think he did? Luke Unpolished Patterson and Julie Stellar Molina?

Though he is admittedly baffled by her choice of Nick. He’s not gonna judge people by who they date, but Julie is this bright firework of power and talent and life and music, and Nick is… a dude who seems to have chosen to wear fedoras over developing a personality.

Okay, maybe that’s not fair.

But he’s not the only one who thinks that.

After Nick’s first brunch with the guys and Flynn, Julie walks him out to his car. In their absence, a prickly silence hangs over the table until Reggie finally hums out a dubious “Huh.”

Alex tries a bit harder. “He seems nice.” Flynn sucks her teeth, and Alex’s eyes cut to her. “You don’t like him?”

Luke forces himself to focus on his fork, twirling it around to examine every surface in the light. He can’t be part of this conversation. He’s not going to be a jealous dick about this. He’s _not_.

“I’m not trash talking her boyfriend behind her back,” Flynn insists.

“So you trash talk her boyfriend to her face?” Reggie blurts out.

Without looking at her, Luke knows she’s glaring at the bassist. “We are not gossiping about them. Nick is fine.” Alex winces audibly because… yeah, fine is somehow more scathing than an actual insult. “There’s nothing wrong with him. It’s just not what I expected for her this year.”

Ever the gentleman, Alex quickly changes the topic, but when Luke finally drags his eyes from his fork, he finds Flynn watching him. He sits up straighter and drops the fork on the table, but her gaze doesn’t change and he has no idea what means.

* * *

The one upside of Julie dating Nick is that, maybe ironically, Luke feels more able to ask her to hang out. Before, he was doing complex math in his head about how often he could spend time with her before it became weird or overbearing, because them hanging out meant something very specific to him. ~~And he thought it meant that to her.~~ Now that that’s removed, he feels more able to just ask her to do stuff.

Which is how she ends up in his apartment when furious knocks shake his door.

Alex and Reggie’s eyes bug with concern—somehow all of Sunset Curve knows who will be on the other side before Luke opens the door. He’s gotten away with this for too long.

That doesn’t mean he’s prepared for the sheer fury rolling off of his normally mild-mannered parents. Or for the aggressive way they shoulder their way into his living room.

“What are you guys doing here?” 

His mother holds up a piece of paper that looks like a tuition bill. “You’re doing a BM?”

His first reaction should be his heart dropping at the knowledge that the university has changed the way they write their tuition bills, but his brain sticks on the wrong thing. “Did you print out an e-bill? To be dramatic?”

“You lied to us.”

Alex and Reggie’s eyes are wide as they attempt to draw back into the couch to hide. But Julie leans forward, eyes sharp as she takes in the scene.

Luke reluctantly drags his eyes to his parents. “Yeah, I did.”

His mother tries to shove the bill into his hands. “Do you have any idea how expensive that lie was?”

He lets the paper flutter to the ground. “So far, $160,000. If you have complaints about tuition rates, I can give you the university president’s number. Or you can just yell at US society as a whole. Good luck with that.”

“Luke,” his father snaps. “We made our feelings about a music degree very clear.”

“I understood them. I just chose not to listen to them since it’s, you know, my life.”

His mother’s jaw snaps. “But it _is_ our $160,000.”

“I dunno who you think I am, but I’m never gonna be some dude in a suit doing, like, business stuff.” … it’s possible Luke hasn’t actually learned anything in his business classes. His entire understanding of what a businessman does is centered around his vague, secondhand knowledge of _The Apprentice_.

“Let’s be realistic here. You’re not going to be a musician either.”

A sneer pulls back his nostrils. “I’m always gonna be a musician. Even if I never earn money off of it.” He flashes back to the image of Julie when he first met her, tucking herself away under her baseball cap. “Hell, even if I never play another note. Why don’t you get that?”

“I understand that you really like music.” Has a sentence ever so perfectly encapsulated how little his mother understands? He runs his fingers angrily through his hair. “But I don’t want my son to fail.”

“Oh, and you’re so sure that’s what’s going to happen?”

“Yes, I am!”

It should feel like a gut punch, but he already knows. She’s said it before. It’s not news, just an unpleasant replay. But it’s new for Julie, who jumps to her feet and appears between him and his mother in an instant.

“Have you heard him play?”

“He’s my son. Of course I have—”

“Not recently.” In spite of everything else that’s going on, his heart wiggles gently in his chest. Julie has been at every open mic night and every gig that Sunset Curve has done this year. But he never realized that she was scanning the crowd the whole time, taking note of who was missing.

His mother blinks rapidly, completely thrown. However she anticipated this argument going, she hadn’t prepared for a tiny sophomore she’s never met diving in front of Luke like a furious wall.

There’s no preparing for Julie Molina.

Julie takes advantage of his mother’s shock to push the point. “Because if you haven’t heard him recently, then no offense, but you don’t know what you’re talking about.”

His mother’s eyes slide over Julie’s head to Luke. “Can we talk in private?”

“Can you hear me play first?”

“You don’t have the upper hand here, Luke. You _lied_ to us, and you wasted more money than you can even imagine.”

Julie’s back stiffens, and from this proximity, he can almost feel the angry tension in her body. “He has a gig tonight. You should come to that.”

What? He doesn’t have a gig. Julie’s got a slot at Ground Zero’s open mic night. But Julie didn’t hesitate, so neither does he.

“If you’re gonna tell me that I’m never going to amount to anything, it would be nice if you had evidence.” He directs the sentence at his dad. Gentle Mitch Patterson has always tried to keep the peace above everything, and now isn’t the exception.

But his mother knows that move. “Mitch, don’t you dare. 160—”

Her husband sighs and points out gently, “Whether or not we attend one performance doesn’t bring that money back. Let’s just take some time to cool off, and we’ll listen to our son play some music.”

Luke winces at the phrasing, but at least it allows his dad to steer his spluttering, furious mother out of the apartment.

As soon as the door clicks shut behind them, he stumbles backwards onto his couch and buries his face in his hands. “Fuck!”

Through his fingers, he can see Julie’s knees crouch on the floor between his feet. “Luke, it’s going to be okay.”

“One gig isn’t gonna change anything.”

“It will.” Her implicit belief in him shoots straight to his core, but he shakes his head.

“Even if she thought we were good, my mom hates our kind of music. She only cares about, like, the Beatles and shit, and that’s not our sound, and I can’t—”

He doesn’t realize that his breath has gone completely out of sync until Julie puts a hand on his knee and whispers gently, “Hey, breathe out to a count of five, okay?”

She stays there, kneeling at his feet and counting his breaths in and out with him, her gentle grip on his knee the only thing tethering him to reality. Reggie and Alex move to sit on either side of him, rubbing his back to soothe him, and when his breath manages to come out at a steady pace again, he finally looks at her through wet eyes.

“I can’t,” his voice cracks.

“Can’t what?” she asks, unshakeable and calm.

“Can’t take your slot, can’t sing in front of them, can’t…”

The last time his parents came to see Sunset Curve perform was at an open mic when he was in high school, and the pressure of feeling like one song had to prove the validity of his entire life path had spiraled Luke into his first ever panic attack, rendering him unable to perform.

She squeezes his knee again. “Would it help if I performed with you? Then it’s not a Sunset Curve gig. It’s just us jamming. Having fun, making music, connecting with people.” He laughs wetly at her use of his turn of phrase. “And with piano, maybe we can slant more Beatles.”

“I don’t want to play the Beatles.”

“He’s not a Beatles fan,” Reggie stage-whispers.

“Something else then. And your parents can sit with my dad. He’s coming down to see me perform, and he’s…” She trails off. “I don’t want to rub it in, but he’s the most supportive person in the world. I’ll sic him on your parents. See if he can work some magic. Luke, it’s going to be okay.” 

He doesn’t really believe it will. But who is he to disagree with Julie Stellar Molina?

* * *

With only a few hours to rehearse, the four of them crouch around Luke’s laptop at the dinner table, trying to pick a song that they already know.

“Maybe we do piano pop?” Luke suggests.

“Ooh, you know what could be good? Jukebox”—Reggie shoots Luke a very obvious wink—“the Ghost.”

Luckily the reference flies over Julie’s head. “I love Jukebox!”

“So do we.” Alex assures her, his gleeful eyes locked on Luke.

Honestly, Luke is started to second guess the wisdom of having friends. If all they’re going to do is pull stuff like—

“We could do ‘Hold It In,’” Reggie suggests innocently.

Luke kicks what he hopes is Reggie’s leg under the table. Singing a song with Julie about needing to confess his feelings? Pass. “Probably not. No bass part.”

“Jukebox doesn’t have a bass player,” Julie points out. “So none of their songs have a bass part.”

But Reggie would never let something so small interfere with his ship. “I’m a very good improviser.”

“I don’t think that song’s really our sound,” Luke insists. “’Sound of a Broken Heart?’” But then he runs the chorus through his head. “Wait, Jules can’t do that.”

“Excuse you, that’s well within my range—”

“No, obviously you’d slay it. But the lyrics.”

“What, cause it’s a love song? I’m cool with singing a love song with you. It’s not going to be weird.”

Luke can only hope that the dubious snort Alex unleashes isn’t audible at her end of the table.

“Is _Nick_ cool with it?” Reggie asks.

Seriously, he’s going to murder his friends. They’re making this weird. It didn’t have to be weird.

She shrugs. “He’s a performer. He gets that it’s not real.”

It lands like a punch to Luke’s heart. Less because of the “not real” comment—he already knew it wasn’t real. More because Nick is significantly more professional than he is. If their roles were reversed, Luke can’t imagine any universe in which he’d be totally cool with watching Julie Molina perform a love song with someone else. 

(He’s reminded sharply that, not three days earlier, he decided to read Nick’s audition review, only to find two words that will haunt him for seven years: “naturally gifted.” The universe is determined to remind him that Julie’s boyfriend is a better performer than he is in every way.)

Luke pulls them back on topic. “Nah, that’s not the problem. It’s the lyrics.” He sings a line from the chorus directly to Julie, “ _When you’re next to me, babe,_ ” emphasizing the “babe.”

She flinches visibly, then screws up her face. “I can handle it.”

“ _Baby, I’m here to tell you that that just ain’t true._ ”

She sticks her tongue out at him, but the shudder that runs through her at “baby” can’t be hidden.

“… what’s wrong with babe?” Reggie asks.

“‘Babe’ and ‘baby’ are such weird pet names! I’m not an infant!”

Her utter indignance tugs fondly at his heart, and Luke shakes his head at the guys. “We can’t do any songs with those words. It’s gonna look like I’m torturing her.”

She lifts her chin. “I’m a professional, I can—”

“Babe,” he shoots back. He clips the word, rendering it short and ironic, but despite the clear playfulness in his delivery, she shudders.

He expects her to stick her tongue out again, but the wrinkles between her eyes look puzzled, not defiant. “How did you even know that? I’ve never told anyone.”

“Any time we listen or watch something where someone uses those pet names, you full-on flinch. It’s hella obvious.” He looks to Alex and Reggie to confirm, but they just shrug.

“Okay, back on track,” Alex says forcefully. “How about ‘Hollywood?’ No babe or baby, and…” He smirks at Luke. “I wouldn’t call it a love song.”

And since Luke can’t openly give his best friend the middle finger in front of Julie, he has to agree.

* * *

Luke spends the entire lead up to their open mic slot jittering his leg under the table. He can’t look at his parents. He can’t look at anything except the rings on his fingers, twisting them around until they leave shiny red marks in his skin.

Julie grabs his hand and squeezes it painfully. Probably on purpose, jolting him out of his spiral. “We’re up,” she says gently.

And he stumbles onto stage, refusing to look for his parents’ faces in the crowd. Instead, he focuses on ~~over~~ tuning his guitar. Like his mother will think his dreams are more valid if his low E is perfectly tuned. 

Rather than calling his attention back to the stage with words, Julie sits at the keyboard and starts playing the long version of the piano opening. His eyes jerk over to her, and she shoots him an encouraging grin, keeping him grounded. He releases his tuning key in time to sing the first verse.

_If all the world's a stage  
Then you're my favorite actress_

He angles his body toward her, letting the crowd see his eyes skip to her. This isn’t a love song, but it performs better when there’s a subject. And if a goofy smile is pulling onto his face at the joyful way she bounces her fingers across the keys, then whatever. It’s a good performance.

_If all of life's a game  
I sure could use the practice_

He glances back at Alex as he sings the final line of the verse.

_I wouldn't call this a love song_

Alex raises a dubious eyebrow, but then lifts his sticks and counts them in. Luke and Reggie’s instruments come alive in their hands, and Luke leans into the mic, finally daring to glance out at a crowd he can’t really see through the stage lights. This feels more like them. Not Sunset Curve—this song isn’t their sound—but this sound feels right for having Julie in the mix. A sound that some part of his writer brain wants to create more of.

_You want me pounding on the church door  
Singing from the streetlight  
Oh it's the kind of love that doesn't exist anymore  
You want Hollywood, this is real life_

As Luke sings “Hollywood,” he nods to the right side of the stage, like he’s pointing at the neighborhood. Julie catches his gaze and shakes her head, confusion wrinkling her brow.

“Hollywood is over there,” she mouths, nodding to the left.

Luke isn’t an expert on directions, but he’s pretty he knows where Hollywood is, so he shakes his head defiantly back at her. Which is a problem, because now he’s singing the next lyrics to her, and suddenly it’s feeling a lot more like a love song.

_I wanna kiss you in the pouring rain  
I say I loved you from the first time I saw you_

She backs him for the next lines, which is really not helping with this whole “this isn’t a love song” thing.

_It's a surefire way to get your heart to break  
That's Hollywood, and this is real life_

When he sings Hollywood, he winks at her and nods right, while she aggressively nods to the left. The crowd’s laughter as they pick up on the disagreement distracts from the end of the chorus, but the smile on her face has completely wiped his parents from his mind, and he can’t find it in himself to be bothered by faults in the performance.

_You want Hollywood_

Eyes sparkling with mischief, Julie leans into her mic and takes the second verse, with Alex and Reggie singing angelic “ahs” in the background.

_If all the world's a stage  
Then you're my favorite actor_

The change of word sticks in his chest. It’s not necessary, and Julie normally never changes gendered words when she sings, but this is a change made for him, to target this particular performance at him.

Oh crap. _Is_ this a love song?

She scans her eyes at the crowd, looking for someone. Nick, presumably.

Okay, it’s not a love song.

_And if all of life's a game  
I sure could use the practice_

She slides her eyes back to Luke for the final line.

_Oh, I wouldn't call this a love song_

Fuck. It is.

_You want me pounding on the church door  
Singing from the streetlight  
Oh it's the kind of love that doesn't exist anymore  
You want Hollywood, this is real life_

Smug, she nods to the left. Reggie, who’s rocking out behind her, jerks his head in the same direction, rolling his eyes at Luke.

_I wanna kiss you in the pouring rain  
I say I loved you from the first time I saw you_

She glances out at a spot in the crowd again. For Nick. Right. Because she loves Nick.

_It's a surefire way to get your heart to break  
That's Hollywood, and this is real life_

But he can’t dwell on his sadness for long, because now the crowd is involved in the Hollywood gag, with large groups of the audience pointing to the left in time to Julie’s nod. Luke bursts into laughter, unable to keep singing the backing vocals for Julie, and her answering grin makes his heart dance.

_You want Hollywood, and this is real life_

As they lead in to the piano and guitar duet, she nods for him to join her.

A move she stole from him.

Even if she hadn’t nodded, the lure of their instruments playing together is too strong. The way the piano and guitar blend has him dancing over to her, like the instruments have decided they want to sit together and are tugging their humans together.

Belatedly, he realizes that he’s too far from his own mic, and he’s supposed to sing the next part. So he slides onto the piano bench next to her, swooping into her mic. Their eyes lock and she mouths the words along with him, scrunching her nose with joy as she accompanies him on piano.

_You want me pounding on the church door  
Singing from the streetlight  
Oh it's the kind of love that doesn't exist anymore  
You want Hollywood, and this is real life_

As her breath washes across his face, he finally remembers that Nick is watching and they’re too close. This isn’t appropriate. Even if it’s a performance on her end, it’s not on his, and this isn’t cool.

He skips back to his mic, missing the first part of the line, but what does it matter? The crowd knows the lyrics by now.

_—in the pouring rain  
I say I loved you from the first time I saw you  
It's a surefire way to get your heart to break  
That's Hollywood, and this is real life_

Glancing back at Julie, conceding, he nods to the left with her. 

As Julie plays the outro of the song, the whole place falls silent, completely focused on the wrecking ball behind the keys. Her eyes flick out to that spot in the crowd again, and he finally forces himself to follow her gaze.

Oh. She’s been looking at _their parents_ this whole time. Checking to see how they’re reacting. Nick doesn’t even seem to be in the crowd.

His heart feels impossibly soft as he brings his attention back to her, watching her finish playing. Her eyes slip closed, and she’s lost in the music, finding the keys by memory alone. The kind of joy on her face that he only ever sees when she’s making music. He’s not sure whether it’s her inescapable bliss or the unwavering support she’s shown him today, but he feels like his chest is boiling. Like there’s a pot of some kind of feelings being cooked. Something inside him being permanently changed.

Only he doesn’t have time to examine the contents of that pot because the song comes to an end and the small space bursts into cheers.

So he sets the pot aside to examine later.

* * *

Reggie and Alex vanish from the café the instant the Pattersons walk up to Luke, and Julie shoots him a goodbye smile as she heads toward her father. He shoots an answering one back.

His mother raises an eyebrow. “Your girlfriend seems… lovely.”

He bounces on his heels. “Cool it with the heteronormativity. I raised you better than that.”

“Oh, it’s not heteronormativity, dear. I can read my son’s face.”

His dad chuckles. “I think a stranger could read his face on this one, Em.”

How have they somehow conjured a worse conversation topic than the one he’s been dreading for years? “Not my girlfriend, okay? Not gonna be either. Can we please talk about how disappointed you are in me?”

“You did a wonderful job,” his mother offers cautiously. He tries not to roll his eyes at “wonderful.” She might as well have patted him on the head and handed him a cookie.

But silence descends between them, like she’s said her piece.

“… that it?”

His mom heaves a sigh, the weight of twenty years of arguments in her breath. “What else can we say?”

Her dad jumps in. “We’ve shelled out too much money for you to not have a degree at the end of it, and at this point, it’s probably too late to change your program.”

It might not be, but Luke’s definitely not going to volunteer that information. “So… I can be a music major? Just like that?”

His mother shakes her head, like there are full monologues she could give on the topic, but she’s been reduced to, “You shouldn’t have lied to us.”

Scuffing the toe of his shoe into the café floor, he mumbles, “Maybe you shouldn’t have forced me to lie."

“Don’t test me right now,” she snaps.

“Emily,” his dad cautions.

That weighty sigh sags out from between his mom’s lips again. “Julie’s father pointed out that eventually we need to let our children make their mistakes—”

“Choices, he said choices,” his dad tries to clarify.

“—so I think this is a huge mistake, but at this point, I can’t stop you from making it, can I?”

He clenches his jaw so hard that he can’t get words out. He’d always assumed that if he and his parents ever cleared the air, it would actually be cleared. This sits uncomfortably in the middle—giving him just enough of what he wants that he can’t complain, but not at all in the way he wants it. Begrudging and unresolved and leaving a pit in his stomach. All he can do is nod and try to extract himself from the conversation as quickly as possible.

* * *

Julie finds him in the middle of the night in one of the 24/7 practice rooms at Gateway, plonking listlessly on the keys of a piano he can’t really play. Even through the fog of rage and sadness settling over him, he can’t tamp down the happy little skip in his heart at the sight of her.

“How’d you find me?”

“My spidey-senses were tingling.” He raises a dubious eyebrow, and she lets out a conceding smile as she gently closes the lid on the piano. “When you’re sad, you sulk here. I was hoping you wouldn’t be here.” The fact that she checked anyways draws a lump to his throat—equal parts affectionate and painful. She perches on the bench next to him, facing away from the piano so that she can rest her elbows back on the lid. “How did it go?”

“‘This is a huge mistake but we can’t stop you.’” He keeps his eyes on the music rack in front of him. Reggie and Alex had been fairly upbeat when he’d told them—“best case scenario, dude”—and he can’t have another conversation about how technically things went well. Because maybe they did, but nothing about it feels like it went well.

“For what it’s worth, they’re wrong.”

He flicks up the corner of his mouth in a smile he doesn’t mean. “Hope so.”

Her elbow nudges his side, forcing him to look at her. “Sunset Curve is the most epic band ever,” she mimics him, “and they’re going to eat their words.”

But he can’t find a laugh within him right now. “Maybe. Or maybe if we make it big they’ll just pretend it was a fluke. Or maybe…” Unpolished. Teachable. Maybe they’re right, and maybe he’ll go nowhere.

“Hey.” She ducks her head, capturing his gaze with a fierceness that usually only comes out when he pisses her off. “I believe in you, Luke Patterson.” The words could be light or easy or flippant, but she says them like she’s quoting gospel.

Floored by her conviction, he struggles to find his voice. “Yeah?”

“Yeah.”

There’s too much tension, and he needs to deflate it, so he slides his fingers across the lid of the piano like he’s still able to play it. “Apparently some of the stuff he said got through, so thank your dad for me? And thanks for bringing him. And for performing with us.”

“Of course. I owed you.”

“How’s that?”

She gnaws on her lip. “Did I never tell you how I started singing again?” He shakes his head—he hasn’t been part of her story then. Just a participant on the edge, an irritant, a frustrated witness to a pain he couldn’t understand or ease. “It was this thing you said about how songs let you communicate with people you can’t talk to.”

“Really? _That?_ You make fun of me for saying that kind of shit all the time.”

Her grin is soft and teasing—the usual grin she directs at him, only it’s weightier in the middle of the night. “I stand by mocking you. And I’m not giving you full credit. Lots of people had been saying versions of that to me all year. About how music would let me connect with my mom again. It just never clicked before. I don’t know if you said it at the right time or said it the way I needed to hear it, but you nudged me into singing again. You helped me feel more connected to my mom, and I was hoping to do the same thing for you.”

Her eyes meet his, serious and fond and vulnerable and trusting, and for a single moment, he feels _precious._ In spite of all the disasters that make up who he is as a person, and in spite of all the ways he’s failed to be the kind of friend to her that he wants to be, he helped her. She cares about him. She basically threw down with his parents on his behalf. Loyal and confident and kind and powerful and stellar and…

… that pot of feelings that brewed during the gig overturns, dumping out the contents of his heart so that he has to look at and identify them.

Fuck.

He’s in love.

But she doesn’t realize she’s causing him a crisis, because she keeps talking. “I’m sorry it didn’t go better.”

Even though he’s currently so numb that he can’t feel his fingers, he tries to force his mind back onto this conversation. “Nah, that was perfect. Or, it was the best conversation we’ve had in years, so as perfect as a first step was ever gonna be. Thank you.”

She smiles back, eyes sparkling gently in the harsh lights of the practice room, like pools inviting him to step into her soul and _for fuck’s sake, look away, dude._

He grabs onto the first casual topic he can, nodding at her band shirt. “Didn’t take you for a Miike Snow fan.”

“Oh, it’s Nick’s.”

Right. Cause Nick lives in Gateway, so she’s probably come here directly from his apartment. He finally clocks her USC pajama pants and the giant pawprint slippers that bring a grin to his face in spite of the clear “I’m here fresh out of my boyfriend’s bed” vibe. His heart squeezes tightly, and he tries to shove the pain away. She’s happy. That’s what’s important.

“I should let you get back to—.” He gestures vaguely at the door. _Where the fuck was this sentence going?? Please stop._ “I’ve heard normal people are, like, sleeping this time of night.”

She grins. “I’ve heard those rumors too.”

The weak attempt at banter almost lures him in, and his mouth is opening to keep the cycle going, but she’s literally wearing her boyfriend’s shirt and he’s never known how to keep their banter from falling into flirtation. So instead he shoots her a soft smile. “Thanks for checking on me, babe.”

She shudders and sticks her tongue out at him. But her gaze lingers on his face and suddenly she pulls him into a hug, a whiff of something vaguely floral filling his senses. As he wraps his arms around her, it strikes him that she should feel tiny, but the day has worn him down so far that he feels like the small one. As if, while she’s holding him, she can protect him from everything outside that hurts.

“I love you, dude,” she says, clapping him on the back.

It takes him a moment to figure out how to form the words himself. Right now, with the realization fresh in his heart, the gulf between how she means it and how he means it is an ocean. Rooting through his heart, he tries to push all the unwanted romantic love to the side, focusing solely on the fierce platonic love he feels as he whispers back, “Love ya too.”

* * *

What surprises Luke is how his feelings for Julie manage to be simultaneously all-encompassing and… not. Sure, there are times when he feels like this love will swallow him whole—when he watches her perform, when she helps him take care of Alex and Reggie after a party, when she invites Sunset Curve home for Thanksgiving, when she figures out how to fix one of Luke’s songs by just glancing at it.

But bigger than that are the moments of their friendship. When she jams with the band, when they study in the library, when she endures him grumbling about the size of the crowds at Ground Zero open mics, when she drags him to football games and patiently explains the significance of whatever’s taking place on the field to him.

It helps that Nick remains separate from the rest of her life. As much as Luke would love to be chill and a good platonic friend, he thinks that Nick’s constant presence would press that sensitive jealous spot on his heart too many times for him to endure with any level of decorum. 

(He does sometimes wonder, with a snideness that he _knows_ is dripping in jealousy, how Nick manages to have a casual long-term relationship with Julie. Luke can’t imagine a universe in which he would be dating Julie and content to see her only a few nights a week, to not completely embed her in his life.)

He doesn’t say anything to Reggie or Alex about his feelings, but he suspects they know. From the way they stop teasing him about Jukebox and sparks. From the looks they exchange when Julie sings or writes with him. From the way that, when Luke is sulking at a party trying not to watch Julie and Nick dance, Reggie wraps a comforting arm around him and drunkenly suggests, “Maybe she’ll get her sparks soon.”

Luke tries not to think about that. The only people who think that sparks are a solution to your love life woes are middle schoolers and producers of bad romantic comedies.

He isn’t thinking like that.

_He isn’t._

He’s focused on slogging through his senior year, which somehow manages to be the longest _and_ shortest academic year of his life. It’s the last time he’s ever intending to be a student, and there’s something about the comfort of a semester schedule that he’s going to miss.

But he’s also really sick of writing essays and taking exams. Of trying to cram all this knowledge into his brain and synthesize it into diary entries for his TAs. The only reason he gets any work done that year is because studying in the library is the only guaranteed time he gets alone with Julie.

It feels right somehow that he finishes the last exam of his university career after two days without any real sleep. Going to a party immediately afterwards is definitely a mistake, but he hasn’t seen his friends all week, he’s graduating in a few days (assuming he passed his classes), and as long as he doesn’t do anything irresponsible like drink while he’s this sleep-deprived, he should be fine.

Luke walks into the house and the first thing he sees is Nick kissing Julie, so he grabs a beer. Or two.

Sometimes a guy’s gotta make disastrous life choices. It’s fine as long as he’s being self-aware about it, right?

His already low tolerance is shot to hell by his exhaustion, and he’s drunk much faster than he should be, but at least he’s sober enough to appreciate when Nick leaves the party early to finish an essay. But the guy isn’t really _gone._ Julie keeps playing with a necklace Nick got her for her birthday, sliding the gaudy pendant back and forth across her finger. It’s not her style, covered in large, fake gems that her freaking boyfriend of fourteen months should know are not to her taste. But she wears it whenever she has plans with Nick, and something about the sight of it, and the whole performative dance she feels like she has to do about liking it, always makes Luke’s stomach churn. He’s just not sure whether it’s jealousy or legitimate concern.

She catches him staring at it and quirks her eyebrow. “What?”

Oh no. He’s a complete mess and he absolutely should not be left alone with Julie, who somehow manages to look pretty in the grungy lighting of this random living room. The unofficial dance floor next to them is overheating the house, and alcohol-scented sweat is prickling at her brow and tugging frizz into her curls, and he’s never seen anyone so beautiful. Crap, why did Alex and Reggie have to leave early to go study? There’s no one to stop him from saying something disastrous, like “you should date someone who understands you. It’s me, I’m someone.”

Crap, he can actually feel those words forming in his mouth. Oh no. Someone please stop him, literally anyone—

Fortunately, the universe intervenes in the form of the DJ shouting, “This one goes out to our graduating seniors!”

Unfortunately, while Luke is expecting something triumphant or celebratory, what plays through the speakers are the somber, cheesy opening notes of Vitamin C’s “Friends Forever.”

It’s suddenly very easy to identify all the seniors in the room, because they turn toward the DJ en masse and yell some variant of “Fuck off!”

The international students all look confused and the underclassmen are laughing. If he were in a better frame of mind, Luke would be content to sit on the sidelines and laugh at the chaos caused by the most cliché US graduation song of all time, but not tonight. Not when he has the emotional fortitude of tissue paper. Luke immediately tries to head for the door, but Julie snags his hand, stopping him in his tracks more than her gentle grip should.

“You can’t graduate without listening to this at least once,” she insists.

“I’m graduating from _college,_ not middle school. I’m not crying over this fucking song again.”

“Come onnn,” she cajoles. He’s not sure if it’s just the shadows of the room falling on her face, or whether she’s actually looking up at him through her eyelashes, but his heart fumbles.

“I don’t even know how to dance,” he tries.

“Then we’ll do it middle school style.”

Before he can ask what that means, she drapes her arms around his neck and tugs him onto the dance floor. On instinct, he reaches out to put his hands on her hips. When his brain is this fuzzy and she’s smiling at him like that, he doesn’t have the capacity to refuse a dance, but he holds her further away from him. “If this is middle school, you gotta leave room for Jesus, Jules. Dance like your math teacher’s chaperoning.”

She laughs and slowly spins him in place, starting to sing along to the song. He wants to refuse to sing, because fuck this song and fuck these life choices, but the lure of Vitamin C during graduation week is too strong. At first, Luke thinks he’s going to be able to keep it together because Julie is laughing as she sings and he’s laughing, but then he starts to pay attention to the lyrics.

_But when we leave this year, we won't be coming back  
No more hanging out 'cause we're on a different track_

He studies Julie’s face, trying to see if she’s as worried about that as he is, but she’s just singing the words like they’re any other lyrics. Maybe she doesn’t care, maybe she’s not thinking about the meaning of the words, or maybe he’s too tired and drunk to accurately read her face, but it still pinches his gut.

_And if you got something that you need to say  
You better say it right now  
'Cause you don't have another day_

Huh.

That’s…

Um.

Fuck you, song. He just came here to have a good time, and he’s honestly feeling so attacked right now.

There’s a lump in his throat—maybe impending tears or maybe his body trying to tamp down a confession that would be incredibly inappropriate to make to one of his best friends when she’s in a relationship and not interested in him. He tries to swallow the lump—he’s not going to cry to this fucking song. Literally any song but this song. 

… but then the iconic chorus starts and it’s like multiple treasure chests of memories are being unlocked at once.

Middle school graduation when Bobby was moving to a different school district and the Sunset Curve boys clung to one another, sobbing to this song as they promised that the band would never ever split up.

High school graduation, when Luke said tearful goodbyes to classmates that he hasn’t thought about since. When he and Bobby got into a vicious argument after the rhythm guitarist finally admitted that he was going to Indiana for college and officially leaving the band. When Luke looked back at his high school for the last time, knowing it was the last time he was going to be able to burrow in his mistakes with the excuse that he was just a kid.

If he were sober and rested, his takeaway would be “wow, maybe students in the US have too many graduations.” But he’s not, so instead all the sadness and loss of those memories is pouring into his heart at once, the pain transplanting onto all the parts of his life at USC that he’s most scared to lose. Everything from Ground Zero milkshakes to Doheny library to the fucking student services office. But most importantly, to the girl in his arms, whose role in his life is so precarious and so tied to all those things.

Julie realizes that he’s crying before he does.

“Oh no, Luke…”

He groans. “Fuck this song, seriously.”

Her face wriggles with a barely restrained sympathetic laugh, and she steps in closer, her arms around his neck transforming from an awkward slow dance to a hug. He wraps his arms around her back and collapses his face onto her shoulder, like her presence can bring calm to his mind. When the chorus comes around again, she pops up on the balls of her feet and sings it softly into his ear.

_As we go on, we remember  
All the times we had together  
And as our lives change, come whatever  
We will still be friends forever_

And he has to put whatever effort he’s still capable of exerting into keeping his body from shivering at the warmth of her comforting breath and words.

He’s not sure how long they sway on the dance floor, because he’s so out of it that time has become meaningless, but when the song _finally_ ends, she lets him go. “You wanna go?” she asks gently. He can only nod, and she gently tugs him out of the house.

It’s only when they’re outside in the warm LA air that he fully appreciates how much of a mess he is. His whole brain is heavy and foggy, and while he knows his feet are moving, he feels detached from them.

Why did he have those beers?

“Baaaaabe, slow downnn,” he whines as he stumbles after her.

“You’re such a toddler,” she replies fondly. (He’s assuming her voice is fond. He’s drunk. He has to assume he’s charming.)

As they start to cross Ellendale, Julie slaps her hand over his chest to stop him from walking. A car flies by, the rush of air sending him staggering backwards. She shakes her head. “I’m so glad you’re graduating. I would like to retire from being your babysitter.”

“I know how to cross the street,” he pouts, but she steps forward to check for traffic. Once she’s satisfied, she waves him across before she skips ahead, humming that damn Vitamin C song under her breath.

Every note rubs away at his heart like a thorn. Sober Luke knows that she’s joking, that she will miss him. But Drunk, Exhausted Luke can’t get that damn lyric out of his mind. _No more hanging out 'cause we're on a different track._ Sure, they’re friends, but what on earth is their friendship going to look like when he doesn’t live near the university anymore? When she has classes and papers and finals and he’s out in the world working the simultaneously open and busy schedule of a musician trying to keep his nose to the pavement and his feet to the grindstone? (His brain is swimming, his metaphors mixing.)

Julie will be busy, and why would he be the thing she makes time for? He’s just the same lost puppy nipping at her heels that he has been for the past two and a half years, desperately trying to prove that he deserves to take up her time and talent, and there’s no way that he’ll be a priority for her. Nor should he be.

He’s unpolished. Teachable.

She’s stellar.

And the instant he graduates, he’ll be out of her orbit.

The realization swings into his wobbly brain like a weight, but before he can dwell on it further, a sea of bright purple sparks explode inside his eyes.

Purple crowds his vision until he can’t see anything else, and he stops walking, hoping that there aren’t any oncoming cars. The sparks expand beyond his eyes and fill his head, like his brain is baking soda and the sparks are vinegar, like everything in him is fizzling, like bubbles are temporarily pushing out the exhaustion and alcohol. His whole body trembles, but he’s the most awake that he’s been in days, and so he’s not really surprised when the sparks gather up in his chest and shoot forward like a bolt of lightning. His eyes are closed—he’s not sure when that happened—but he can still feel the bolt strike Julie. His heart burns and, for a moment, he registers a disorienting sensation from beyond his body, like he can feel her heart burning right back. Like their souls are being fused together.

_Of course._

“Luke, you coming?”

His eyes flutter open. Julie has reached the sidewalk on the other side of the street, but as she looks at him, her forehead wrinkles in concern and she starts back to him.

His mind is clear, and the abrupt contrast with the sluggishness that’s wormed its way into every inch of his body over the past forty-eight hours makes him feel unnaturally alert. Shocks from the sparks are still flickering through his body, but they’re easy to ignore because _Julie is his soulmate._

Maybe he should be overwhelmed or intimidated or terrified, but Julie being his soulmate is a confirmation of what he already knows, like the universe is validating the way he feels about her.

… until the streetlight catches on that pendant around her neck, and he’s immediately transported back to the library the first time he saw that shy giggle leave her lips.

Right. Not a romantic soulmate. But then what?

She hesitates before she steps back into the street, and it’s only then that he realizes that he’s still standing in the middle of Ellendale like an asshole. But he doesn’t yet trust his sparking legs to support him if he tries to move.

“Luke, are you okay? Did the song break you?”

 _Song._ Of course.

He’d like to blame the alcohol for the lack of thought he puts into this, but honestly, he doesn’t know that he would have thought about it more if he were sober. “You should join the band.”

She stops short, and he can’t read her face. “Your brain is not in the right state to make that kind of decision.”

The sparks shudder through his body, and he feels moisture running down his face again. Ugh, could he please stop crying for five seconds?? “Yes, it is.” He tries to project an insistent tone, but she laughs gently.

“Luke, you’re literally crying right now.”

“Because I need you in the band.”

“No, you don’t.”

So he does the only thing that makes sense. He drops to his knees, clasps his hands together, and pulls the biggest pout onto his face that he can muster. “Please, please, Julie Molina. Join the band.”

Trying to tamp down her smile, she skips toward him. “Get up, you’re gonna get hit by a car.”

“There aren’t any cars. No one is driving. Everyone is inside crying because they have to learn things.” … okay, maybe the alcohol hasn’t completely left his system.

She fixes him in place with a very familiar exasperated look. “Luke.”

“Julie.” She rolls her eyes, but he can see the softness to it, so he tries to make his eyes as big and puppyish as possible. “If you join, we have a real chance at greatness.”

“You have a chance at greatness without me.”

He shuffles forward on his knees, the rough pavement tearing into his skin through his jeans. “You’re a star. Without you, we’re like an epic sunset. But with you, we’re like an epic sunset that…” Ugh, metaphors are hard. Where was he going with this?

“… has a single visible star?” she suggests, sass evident even to his jumbled mind.

His brain finally remembers the destination he was aiming for. “Sunset Curve is like one of those sunsets that you stop and stare at when it’s happening. But you? You’re like this sunset I saw when I was eleven that was so fucking gorgeous and unique and mind-blowing that I still think about it. You’re the sunset that no one can ever forget.” Her face stills. Shit, that came out more romantic than he intended. “Your voice. Your piano playing. Your writing,” he quickly clarifies. “Dude, you’re like a human wrecking ball, and the guys and I could be, like, the crane thingy that swings the wrecking ball around.”

Her mouth wriggles. “So close to being a good metaphor.”

“That’s why I need you, boss. I can’t do this without you.” He holds his clasped hands higher over his nose, hoping it renders her view of him as just a pair of pleading eyes and hands.

She rolls her eyes again, but the gesture is fond, lacking edge. “The guys are going to have an opinion.”

“Their opinion is gonna be ‘about fucking time.’”

Her lip catches in her teeth, and his heart skips because he suddenly _knows_ before she even says a word. She’s going to say yes. She’s his musical soulmate, and she’s going to join the band and they’re going to make music together for the rest of their lives. This is what destiny feels like.

Like she can hear how carried away he’s getting, she shakes her head. “Ask me when you’re sober and you’ve slept.”

“I will. But I wanna know what you’re gonna say.” No longer able to stay still with the sparks running through his body, he wriggles in place, trying to keep those big puppy dog eyes on her.

The smile that curls up the corner of her mouth shoots straight into his heart. “If you mean it, I’m going to say yes.”

He stumbles to his feet and throws his arms around her, swinging her around as best he can with his current inability to balance.

“I haven’t said yes yet!” she giggles.

“But you’re gonna.”

She pulls back just enough to smile up at him, and the bond burns, like a tongue of flame reaching out for her before it dies out. Because it’s one-sided.

Before he can dwell on that, she grabs his wrist and tugs him out of the street.

By the time she walks him back to his apartment, the alcohol and exhaustion have settled back into his body, and he sways in place, the sparks still prancing through him. She studies his stumbling feet with concern. “Promise me you’ll drink water and get some sleep. A full twelve hours, you need to make up some of that sleep debt.”

“Will do, boss.”

Her hand reaches for his face, and for a wild moment, he thinks she’s going to cup his cheek, but instead she wipes away dampness from the corner of his eyes, tears he didn’t know were still on his skin. “Seriously, are you okay?”

The light of passing headlights slide over her face, and his breath catches because she’s so beautiful and so Julie, and the bond feels like water simmering in a pot, dancing inside his heart. _She’s a part of him._

He tugs her into a hug, buying himself time to get his voice working again. All his thoughts are blurring together, and the only way he can express himself is with the lyrics still cycling through his head. “Friends forever?”

She chuckles in his ear, and it sends a shiver through him. “Come whatever,” she quotes back, and the worries of earlier leech out of his body.

* * *

He calls Alex and Reggie as soon as he reaches his bedroom because there’s something he urgently needs to talk to them about.

“Do you think penguins are in love?” is what comes out. He’s not sure if that was what he had intended to call about, but it feels correct.

Alex sighs. “Dude, we’re in the middle of studying. Can this—”

Luke gestures wildly, as if the guys are in his room and able to read the urgency of the situation from his frantic pacing. “This is important. Do you think penguins are in love?”

To his credit, Reggie genuinely tries to engage with the question. “Like, are all penguins in love?”

“For fuck’s sake,” Alex groans.

“Nah.” Luke searches his brain for the words he’d been trying to say, but it’s like they’re sitting on top of a hill that his clouded mind can’t be bothered to climb. “Like, people say penguins mate for life, right? But what does that _mean?_ Like, how are they mating?”

“I’m sorry, are you drunk dialing us at one am to ask about penguin procreation?”

“No! The opposite. Do you think, like, we’re projecting that onto them? Because of a-ama-amo—“ Luke quickly, and probably wisely, decides that he’s not currently able to pronounce amatonormativity. “Because society is fucked. Like, are we pointing at penguins and deciding, ‘aww, they’re mating for life, they must be in love’ but really the penguins are in a band together and they’re super committed to the music?”

There’s an extremely long, judgmental silence, which Reggie eventually breaks with a very kind, “They might not be in love, but penguins are probably not in bands?”

Ugh. Luke eyes those words sitting up on that hill again, but still can’t find a way to reach them. “What if, like, two penguins are in a band but one of them just happens to be in love with the other? Do you think the penguin can just lock those feelings in a box and focus on the music?” He becomes dimly aware that his eyes are moist again, and he doesn’t know why he’s crying or why his voice cracks when he asks, “Do you think they can still spend their whole lives together?”

Alex sighs again, this time sympathetic. “Is this about Julie?”

Like the sparks in his body can hear her name, they shudder again, and he collapses onto his bed with a groan. “She’s so pretty. I really hope we become famous. Like, the kind of famous where people make gifs of her, and then I can watch her doing her Julie smiles on loop. Cause her smiles are like joy factories.”

There’s another stunned pause before Reggie asks, “ _We_ become famous?”

“I want her to join the band. Please can she join the band?”

“Yeah, it’s about time,” Alex replies immediately.

“Shouldn’t we be joining her band?” Reggie asks.

It should maybe be a bigger moment, but Luke was never worried about the Alex and Reggie part of the equation, even pre-sparks when the thought _she should join the band_ had nagged at him like an earworm. “God, she’s so _Julie._ I wish…” He trails off, mind sticking on the memory of a photo he saw at the zoo of two penguins holding flippers. “I wish I had a flipper.”

Reggie cackles. “What?”

But Alex intervenes. “Dude, please go drink some water.”

“I don’t need water. I’m a grown up.”

“That’s not—okay.”

For a second, one of the words on the hill becomes clear—soulmate. But even trapped under the fog of his mind, Luke knows that the enormity of that concept hasn’t sunk in. He’s not ready for anyone’s opinion on it yet. So instead he asks, through a cracking, slurred voice, “Did you know she makes my heart sing?”

Alex’s normally sarcastic voice is impossibly gentle. “Yeah, we know.”

“I try to make it stop singing, but how am I supposed to know her and not have it do that?”

“Maybe you need some space to move on,” Reggie suggests. “Maybe she shouldn’t join the band.”

But the bond in his chest and the sparks still making their way through his body recoil in protest. “No! She’s my musical penguin.”

“She—okay.”

“I don’t need a flipper. I need to share the mic.”

Now Reggie’s voice turns sharp. “Bro, seriously. Water, bed. Sleep it off.”

* * *

Luke, Reggie, and Alex roll into their pre-booked practice room late the next afternoon. Luke is sure that he’s a mess—deep circles under red eyes, a furrow on his brow, and a persistent pain in his head. (He misses his hangover-related imposter syndrome—this does _not_ feel like a necessary part of his college experience.) But then he catches sight of Julie at the piano, a smile hugging her lips as she plays, and the bond wriggles with joy like it’s warbling out a high note. She looks at him and her smile grows and…

They were meant to make music together. She’s his soulmate. _How fucking lucky is he?_

As a huge, soft grin spreads over his face, he clasps his hands together and falls to his knees.

Alex groans and Reggie exclaims, “Are you still drunk??” but Luke doesn’t explain or take his eyes off of hers.

She ducks her head, grinning to herself, before she meets his eyes with that look that makes him feel precious. His heart thuds so fiercely in his chest that he’s almost convinced it’s audible, but her gaze just slips past him to his bandmates. “Has he asked you about me joining the band?”

Unusually tactful, Reggie keeps his response limited to “Yes.” 

“We’re on board,” Alex adds. “Always have been.”

Then Julie’s eyes slide to Luke’s and a mirroring grin spreads over her face. “Okay.”

* * *

Luke’s hangover doesn’t end up being conducive to rehearsal, and the rest of the week is busy with finals and graduation, so it’s not until eight days later that the new band finally rehearses together for the first time.

Part of Luke is itching to perform with her now that she’s in the band and he knows that she’s his musical soulmate, but part of him is glad for the delay because he’s still getting used to the one-sided bond he feels between them. The bond is mostly dormant—not a constant presence—but when they’re sharing something intense, or when either of them feels particularly strong emotions, the feelings fill the bond like a living string connecting her to him. It takes some getting used to.

But finally, they’re in a practice room, ready to have their first band rehearsal, and he realizes what trouble he’s in.

They start with “Bright,” modifying the first verse and adding in piano, and the whole time that Julie is singing and playing, the bond between them is jumping around in his chest. Like blood rushing back into a leg that’s fallen asleep. Making him twitchy. Making it hard to focus. Alex and Reggie keep eyeing him with concern, but Julie doesn’t seem to notice because she’s completely focused on the sheet music in front of her.

(He can feel the jitter of nerves through the bond, and his heart feels unbearably soft at the knowledge that she’s thinks she needs to prove herself.)

But then they get to the chorus and as he begins to play, he only gets a second to appreciate that they’re making music together for the first time post-sparks before the bond goes haywire. It’s like the charge of an electric circuit, like the rush that they both get from playing is flowing together directly from her soul into his, and it’s hard to remember that it’s one-sided. That she’s not feeling anything. 

The sensations are so overpowering that he stumbles back and collapses on a stool. Everyone immediately stops playing.

“You okay?” Julie asks.

Taking a moment to catch his breath, he bobs his head. “Yeah, I just… uh… tweaked my ankle, I guess.”

He definitely can’t handle standing right now. He needs to stay seated.

He’s not up to his normal standard—his voice is breathy on his verse because he can’t get air into his lungs the way he needs to when his heart keeps getting hit with a shower of electricity, but the longer they rehearse, the more he gets used to the sensation. It’s not that he’s becoming immune to it, but he starts to learn the patterns, anticipates how it’ll feel, and he shifts his performance to accommodate it. Okay, this is manageable. This is fine. This is—

Then they get to the bridge and, as it turns out, the two of them singing and playing together is next level. The bond between them is a live wire, and he keeps stabbing his finger on it and jolting himself and he’s out of breath in a matter of seconds.

Everyone is staring at him, so he forces out, “Uh, maybe we alternate lines instead?”

She makes a note of it but doesn’t take her eyes off of him. “Should we break for the day? You don’t look so good.”

He wants to disagree, but after rehearsing for only a couple hours, he feels like he’s run a marathon, his heart and lungs all twisted up and aching and sore, and he can only nod.

After Julie says goodbye to them, the guys immediately turn on him. “What the hell was that?” Alex asks.

This would be the time to bring up the whole soulmate thing, but he still doesn’t want to hear anyone’s opinions on it. He remembers how quickly Reggie jumped to thinking that Luke should try to get space and move on from Julie. None of his friends have gotten the sparks yet, and for all that Luke can and probably will write endless songs about this situation, he doesn’t know how to put the simple truth into words yet. Space and moving on aren’t options anymore. Julie is part of his very soul, and hopefully his heart will eventually move on of its own accord, but the universe says she belongs in his life.

And Luke? He knew that way before the universe did.

So he shrugs. “Just feeling off today, I dunno.”

“We can’t be in a band with Julie if you’re going to pass out every time you play together,” Alex points out.

“I’m not passing out! Maybe I’m coming down with something.”

They definitely don’t believe him, but he spends the next couple weeks faking a vaguely defined illness so that he can stayed seated during rehearsals and devote himself to learning how to make music with her.

He’s never fully inoculated against the reaction—the first time they perform on stage together, their mutual adrenaline and excitement makes the bond crackle and dance with extra ferocity, and the first time they share the mic, singing with their faces too close, the bond is so intense that his heart feels like it’s going to burst into a million pieces.

But he’s a professional. When a spotlight is on them, it’s easier for him to cover the fact that he’s falling apart because that’s what being on stage is—acting. And if his face does betray how very gone on her he is, he just hopes that that reads as a good performance to both her and the audience.

Over time, he’ll get better at it. 

… he hopes.

What he does have to inoculate himself against are the tricks that the bond plays on his feelings. He reads other people’s accounts of the bond, and while they all describe it differently—different sensations and activated by different shared activities—the accounts of mutual bonds all agree that it feels… well, _mutual._ A secret line of communication between people that lets them share their feelings, that heightens whatever it is they connect over. That brings them closer, entwines their souls together.

But with his one-sided bond? Most of the time it’s like reaching his hand out to hold hers, only to find that she doesn’t know he exists. It’s beyond rejection. He’s a non-entity to her. A ghost she can’t see, won’t ever be able to acknowledge.

But even worse are those times when the bond feels like a circuit running through them both—when her emotions feed into it, and it’s so overpowering that it feels like it _has_ to be mutual. The circuit must lead back to her; it must complete. But then he sees the casual look in her eyes, the ease of her shoulders, the total lack of concern in every inch of her body, and he’s reminded that it’s not mutual. Of course it’s not.

She’s Julie Stellar Molina.

He’s Luke Unpolished Patterson.

She has a boyfriend. 

He’s the boy she flirted with when there was nothing else to do.

She saved his relationship with his parents.

He spent a whole year pressing the pain points of her grief.

In every way—musical, romantic, platonic—she’s a star, an unforgettable, life-changing sunset. And he’s just a boy with a guitar who worships at her feet. So every time the bond tries to confuse him, he devotes an hour to lying in bed at night and repeating very sternly to himself: _It’s one-sided. It’s one-sided. It’s one-sided._ He embeds that truth into his brain and his heart until he knows it like a fact of life, like oxygen.

_It’s one-sided. She’s your soulmate. You’ll never be hers._

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Hopefully the other chapter will be up soonish, but wow was this chapter much longer and more exhausting than I thought it would be. Sorry, Luke. In the meantime, if you're a tumblr person, you can find me [there!](https://pearlcaddy.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Music references:  
> • I had “100 Years” in mind for Julie’s Florence + The Machine cover, but you headcanon you  
> • Obviously “Bright” lyrics  
> • Jukebox the Ghost: “Hold It In” (the number of fics where I’ve almost had them sing this while pining is equal to the number of JatP fics I’ve written), “Sound of a Broken Heart,” “Hollywood” (her piano intro comes from the live version, but otherwise I was thinking of the recorded version)  
> • “Graduation (Friends Forever)” by Vitamin C


	2. Do You Think It’d Be Enough to Fill My Heart With Music?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Chapter title from “Under My Skin” by Jukebox the Ghost
> 
> Someday I will learn brevity, but obviously that day is _not_ today.
> 
> Playlist for this fic is [here](https://open.spotify.com/playlist/3HfrWPEmPHd7Fpng7o6Ab1?si=s5rj0-oIRYucdrBt5fnASA)

Luke hadn’t fully appreciated how much his perception of time was shaped by the semester schedule of school until that structure is gone. Because now that he measures time in days rather than four months blocks, time seems to be moving much faster and before he knows it, Julie is starting her senior year.

It feels weird—knowing that she’s going to campus and the library and Ground Zero without him being there, and he’s grateful all over again for the band, because at least he sees her at rehearsals. And he tries not to dwell on the fact that Nick’s the one who gets to spend what limited downtime she has with her.

He’s not dwelling on it at all.

He’s not even thinking about it, actually. Thanks for asking.

He’s so aggressively not thinking about it that he doesn’t prepare for the shift when Julie arrives late to rehearsal one day. Their current rehearsal space is the studio garage of her childhood home and she’s normally the first to arrive so she can visit her dad and brother. But today, she seems utterly exhausted—"stayed up all night” exhausted—and he immediately bounces his mind away from any Nick-related explanations, and strictly tells himself that she was studying and forgot to tell them she needed the day off from rehearsal.

But after Alex and Reggie have left, he and Julie are meant to be writing together, and her constant yawning draws a “You okay?” out of him before he can stop it.

As soon as the question is out, he flinches and braces himself for the Nick explanation he doesn’t want. But what comes out isn’t what he expected. “Nick and I broke up.”

“Oh shit, I’m so sorry.”

She shrugs and plops down on the couch. “Am I an asshole if I’m not sad?”

“You’re never gonna be an asshole for how you _feel_ about your own breakup.” He sits gently on the arm of the couch next to her, staunchly ignoring the happy wriggling in his end of the bond. _Shut the fuck up, soulmate bond. We’re not being happy about this. We’re not a dick._ “You wanna talk about it?”

“Not much to talk about.” But she sighs in a way that disagrees and admits, “He wrote a song about how he feels about me.” Luke hates that his first thought is _was the song any good?_ He definitely can’t ask that. “And I realized that I don’t feel that way about him. I’ve been saying ‘I love you’ for the past year, because… I don’t know. He said it first, and I like him, and I guess it was an automatic response? But I don’t feel what he feels.”

Luke’s heart begs him not to say this, but he has to. “Maybe love feels different for you.”

“No, when he started singing, I remembered that I _have_ felt like that. Not full on, but moments.” Her fingers twist her bracelets around, like they’re the most fascinating thing she’s ever seen. “Just not for him.”

In the absence of anything else to say, he offers, “I’m sorry.”

She exhales, the sound filling the studio more than it should. “It was what I needed. The past few years were so… intense and overwhelming and full of change. I needed _something_ that was easy and casual and unchallenging.” Luke winces. As much as he never cared for or understood Nick, it’s still got to be rough to have his relationship described like a blow-off elective. “Was that awful of me?” she asks, voice small.

“I think a lot of people do that in college.”

She fiddles with her bracelets again. “You didn’t.”

He shrugs. “I dunno if you know this about me—I don’t really do casual.” A giggle pulls out of her lips, and it sounds like victory. “Either I don’t give a shit or I’m all-in.”

Her smile is directed at her bracelets, but it’s all fondness and for a moment he worries that she’ll ask follow-up questions about his love life. But her shoulder sag and she admits, “I feel bad that I wasted his time.”

Luke almost bursts out laughing at the idea that getting to date Julie for a year and a half would be a waste. But he tries to make his voice come out calm. “You didn’t waste his time. Years from now, he’s gonna get to brag that he dated Grammy winner Julie Molina in college.”

He pulls his eyes over to her, and only then notices that she’s still wearing the necklace Nick gave her. Julie finally meets his gaze and tries to follow his eyeline. Sliding her finger under the gaudy pendant, she holds it away from her neck to study it.

“Is it too soon to say I don’t think he knew you very well?” Luke asks.

She huffs out a breath, shooting him a look like… she agrees, but it _is_ too soon, but also she’s relieved that he knew.

Or maybe he’s projecting.

He reaches out and gently brushes her hair out of the way as he searches for the clasp on the necklace. As his fingers fiddle with the mechanism, she admits, “Did I ever tell you he called me babe?”

Luke’s fingers fumble on the clasp. “What?”

“I should have just told him I hated it, but I thought it was obvious, so I kept waiting for him to figure it out. I know that’s horrible. You should never set tests in relationships, but after a couple months I didn’t know how to correct him without making it awkward.” Luke’s mouth pops open—like, yeah, Julie should have mentioned it, but she _visibly_ recoils every time the word is spoken. How on earth did her boyfriend never notice?

She points a firm finger at him. “Don’t trash talk him.”

“I would never.” But Luke finally gets the clasp open and unhooks the necklace and, as it slips into her lap, he can almost feel her relief in the bond.

They sit in silence, and he takes in her tired face once more before he hops up. “You’re dead on your feet. Let’s go to House of Pies, my treat. Get some coffee in you, _babe_.”

A grin, equal parts exasperated and fond, crawls onto her face. “Why do I put up with you?”

“Cause I buy you pie.”

She rolls her eyes but grabs his elbow and tugs him toward his car.

When Julie was dating Nick, Luke had felt too awkward to ever bring up the soulmate thing. Even though she’s a musical soulmate, there’s still that assumption that a soulmate is romantic, and it’s hard to have a conversation where you tell someone that they’re your soulmate when they’re in a relationship with someone else. Sure, there are a thousand blog posts online about how to do it respectfully, but all of their advice had seemed risky and terrifying. Luke hadn’t wanted to risk negatively impact her relationship at all. And he also couldn’t honestly draw on any of the suggested scripts because “You’re my soulmate, but it’s purely platonic” wasn’t accurate. “You’re my soulmate, and my passionate, undying love for you is irrelevant” was accurate, but didn’t sound very convincing.

Now that she’s not dating Nick, he doesn’t really know what to say. He can’t immediately tell her that he’s her soulmate, because then it’ll seem like he was just waiting for her to be single again, which undercuts the whole “romance has nothing to do with this” element of the equation. And anyways, even if she seems mostly fine, she still needs time to heal from the Nick situation because there’s no casual way to receive the information that you’re someone’s soulmate, so he’s just waiting for her to be in the right emotional place before he maybe considers telling her but suddenly Julie’s graduating and it’s been more than a year and there’s no way to bring it up anymore without it Becoming A Thing.

It’s not like she really needs to know, is it? She’s _his_ musical soulmate. He’s not hers. He took the information and did with it what he needed to—asked her to join the band. Why would it matter to her how invested he is in their musical partnership?

Sure, sometimes he wonders when she’ll get the sparks, and who they might be for. But he tries very hard to dismiss the thought when it comes up. It doesn’t matter. It won’t be him. Whoever it is, he’ll be super happy for her and super accepting.

So it’s fine. It’s just fine. It’s fine. It’s… fine. It is fine.

* * *

Once Julie has graduated, the hustle really begins. Luke is prepared for the slow build-up of Julie and the Phantoms’ popularity over the course of years. What he’s not prepared for is for Panic! At The Disco’s opener to get stranded in the middle of Death Valley and for an old college friend of Reggie’s who interns at the promoter’s office to recommend them as a last-minute replacement. It feels too easy, and it feels undeserved, but also their band is the most epic band ever, so it probably is deserved but are they ready and can they pull this off and…

Luke’s buzzing with too much nervous energy to sleep, so he swings by the studio to fix his amp. They’ll be using the Orpheum’s equipment tomorrow night, but he needs to do _something_ with all this energy.

Before he even turns on the studio light, he’s overwhelmed by a strange, empty ache in his chest that doesn’t seem relevant to his current emotional state. And then he flips the switch and a familiar figure is bathed in light.

Oh. Not an ache in his chest. In the bond.

“Jules, what are you—”

Eyes glistening with tears, she glances up from her spot on the couch, and he comes to a hard stop. “You okay?”

“Yeah.” She bobs her head, but she yanks her hands into her sweatshirt sleeves like she’s trying to climb into her clothes, pulling the neck of the sweatshirt off-center.

Almost worried she’ll spook if he comes over too quickly, he tiptoes across the studio and crouches in front of her. The empty ache in her eyes is something he’s come to associate with her grieving, and he doesn’t want to do the thing he tends to where he flounders around and makes her pain worse because he has no idea what the hell he’s doing. But he also doesn’t want to just leave her alone with this.

“Jules?”

She studies his face for a moment, then slips her sleeved hands between his. “It’s the first day of my mom’s birth month.”

“Birth _month_?”

“She always celebrated the whole month. Making it this whole big celebration of her life and the things she loved and...” She smiles at her hands, and he grips them more tightly. “She would have really loved that we’re playing the Orpheum during her birth month. She should…”

Her voice chokes, and the “be there” is left unsaid.

He doesn’t know what to say. He’s never known what to say. So he rubs his knuckles over her sleeved hands. “What did she do on the first night?”

“We would come out here. Eat some cookies. Have hot chocolate. And start a new song. We wrote a new song every year for her birth month.”

She nods at the seat next to her, where he sees an empty mug, a crumb-covered plate, and an open, blank notebook. Her mouth twitches into a bitter smile. “I’ve only ever managed the first three things.”

He rolls her hands between his, still unsure what to say. She chuckles humorlessly and wipes away a tear. “Sorry, I didn’t know you were coming back here, or I would have—”

“Jules, it’s your home. I’m the intruder.”

She forces a smile at her lap. Fuck, what is he supposed to do?

“Um, I’ll be back in a second, okay?”

“Oh, you don’t—”

“Just need something from my car,” he adds more firmly.

Her hands linger in his, and it’s only with a sheer force of will that he pulls away. He jogs to his car and snatches the wrapped present that’s been sun-soaking in the back seat for weeks. By the time he gets back to the studio, she’s adjusted her sweatshirt and the wisps that were frizzing around her head look smoothed. Her eyes are less damp, though there are spots of dampness on her sleeves now. He crouches in front of her again and slips the present into her hands.

“What’s this?”

“Was supposed to be your birthday present, but I think maybe you could use it now.”

Eyeing him, she rips through the paper and tugs out a poorly folded black t-shirt. She holds it up with a look of confusion… until the shirt unfurls and she reads the front.

“What—”

He slides onto the couch next to her, shoving the plate and mug to the side. “It’s not an original. Your dad said all the Petal Pushers merch was really cheap, so it basically fell apart whenever it got wet? But he had some pictures of your mom wearing them, so I commissioned an artist to replicate the design.”

Julie rotates the shirt to look at the back, taking in the long list of tour dates and locations stretching down the length of the shirt.

“There weren’t any pictures of the back, but I dug out some old tour schedules from your attic, so that’s accurate for their ’95 North America tour.”

Her eyes slide to him, wide with disbelief. For what feels like an hour, but is probably only ten seconds, she doesn’t say or do anything. His lips twitch nervously without his permission. “Sorry, is that a weird present? Should I not have—”

She yanks her sweatshirt over her head and he quickly averts his gaze, even though he knows she’s wearing a tank top underneath. She pulls the Petal Pushers shirt on over the tank top and flings her arms around herself, dropping her chin into her chest.

Like by wearing the shirt, she’s able to hug her mother.

After a long pause, her head drifts up, face filled with an expression he’s never seen before.

Wait, that’s not true. It’s almost like the one she wore the first time he walked her home from the library. Not quite as open, not as clearly inviting. She’s not offering to kiss him. She’s offering… he’s not sure what.

“Thank you, Luke,” she murmurs, her voice so quiet that he can barely hear it.

He swallows sharply and drags his eyes from hers, nodding back at the package. Rooting through the paper, she pulls out a second shirt. “What’s this for?”

“Um, you mentioned that when you have your own home studio, you want a wall of tour shirts. So I thought you’d want an extra for the wall.”

She runs her fingers through the fabric of the second shirt, bunching and unbunching it. “Right. To go next to our band shirts.” Her voice is strangely distorted, and she puts an emphasis on “our” that he doesn’t understand.

“Yeah… I mean, you can also wear it, I just—”

“No, it’s perfect.” She sets a hand on his and her face squeezes up. Then she wipes at her eyes again with her sleeve. “All I got you for your birthday was a keychain,” she forces out through a laugh.

Underselling it a bit—she got him a mini-replica of Eric Clapton’s Fender. “I love that keychain.”

She shakes her head. “Next year, I need to get you an amazing gift and you need to get me something pathetic, like socks. So we’re even.”

He shakes his head right back. “Sorry, boss. I’m a killer gift-giver. Prepare yourself now.”

She groans, but then looks back down at the shirt again. A soft smile tugs at her lips, and all of a sudden she launches herself across the couch to hug him. As she buries her face in his shoulder, he rubs her back, dragging his hand down the list of concert dates.

“You’re a star, and you’re gonna kill it tomorrow,” he whispers. “She’s gonna be so proud.”

She pulls back, but not far enough. Her face is so close that he can count every clump in her eyelashes, can pinpoint the exact shade of brown of her eyes, can feel her breath on his lips. Oh god, he has to do something to break this moment.

He tugs the notebook out from under him and sets it on his lap. “You wanna try to write something, babe?” He tries to say it lightly. He’s never been able to work out exactly what her worry is, but whenever she can’t write something on her own, she gets frustrated beyond what the situation warrants. Almost angry at herself. He doesn’t want to trigger whatever insecurity lies there, but if she can’t write by herself and she wants to write to celebrate her mother, then…

She ducks under his arm and rests her head back against his shoulder. “Can you start us off?”

Her ache shimmers in their bond, and he tries to pull the sensation up into his ear, like he can transcribe her feelings for her mother into a chord progression. “Whatever you need, boss.”

They _do_ kill at the Orpheum the next night, and it’s the thing that secures their first record deal.

But what Luke remembers best is that first song that they carve together out of her grief every night over the next month. The songs they end up writing every year for her mother’s birth month are never for the public, never for anyone other than Luke and the Molinas.

But they’re his favorite things he’s ever written. The most worthwhile music he’s ever made.

* * *

Time gets swallowed by their hustle—life pushing forward artificially quickly as they scramble to meet deadline after deadline as they’re put together their first album, and all of a sudden it’s been over two years since Luke got the sparks.

In the middle of a week of lazy rehearsals while Julie’s been out sick, Alex rushes into the studio late, covered in coffee and looking like someone just swung a wrecking ball at his face.

Reggie’s across the room in an instant. “Are you okay?” he asks, toweling Alex off with one of their rehearsal towels.

Alex’s whole body twitches in response, like he’s itching and shaking. Confused, Reggie backs away, but that physical reaction, combined with the shell-shocked, joy-infused look on Alex’s face? Luke knows what that means. “ _Dude!_ Sparks?”

Mouth fumbling towards a smile, Alex nods. Luke bounces across the garage and wraps him in a hug.

“Who??” Reggie asks the instant they pull apart.

“This guy at La Fayette. He, uh, apparently got the sparks when he saw me and lost control of his skateboard and ran right into me. And then I got sparks. Also a face full of my iced coffee.” But the sarcastic edge is missing from Alex’s voice, overpowered by the rushed, delighted breathiness.

Luke rubs his shoulder with an ear-splitting grin. “Dude, I'm so happy for you.”

Alex finally lets his whole face get taken over by his smile, and he covers his mouth like his joy might leak out. “I didn’t know it was going to feel like this.” He gestures vaguely at his chest but doesn’t explain. Reggie doesn’t question it—asking people about their soulmate bonds is usually considered too intimate, too private, even for close friends—but Luke smiles to himself. He knows how wonderful that bond can feel when it’s one-sided. When it’s mutual? He’s surprised Alex is standing.

Rehearsal is not a thing that day—to be honest, it hasn’t been for the entire week without Julie. They all curl up together on the couch, helping Alex conduct his first tentative text conversation with Willie and basking in secondhand happiness. It’s not until several hours later that Reggie raises the question, “Is that usual? People getting the sparks at the same time?”

Part of Luke has wondered privately about it but it had always felt like a very personal interest. But if Reggie wonders about it too—if it’s a thing multiple people have thought about—then it’s probably a thing the internet has information about. He pulls out his phone to google it.

Alex shrugs. “Willie said he was surprised he got the sparks at all. He figured he wouldn’t need them to know who he wanted to spend his life with.”

Reggie nudges him. “Maybe it was more for you than for him. Like, _you_ needed to know that you were his soulmate.”

“That’s impressively insightful, Reg.”

As a page of statistics loads in front of Luke’s face, he freezes. Alex prods his foot with one of his drumsticks. “You okay?”

For the first time, Luke regrets not telling them about his soulmate. Because he can’t break down in tears in front of them. He just has to convey this information while pretending it doesn’t impact him. “Uh, yeah. Apparently 71% of mutual soulmates get the sparks within two years of each other.”

“Huh,” Alex hums. “That’s higher than I would have thought.”

Luke tries to toss off the next sentence casually. “By five years, it goes up to 97%.”

“Geez,” Reggie groans. “Can you imagine getting your sparks and then waiting _five years_ to find out if the other person is your soulmate? That sounds like hell.”

It’s Alex’s day, and Luke isn’t going to make it all about him.

But while his bandmates talk, he lets his mind drift. It’s not that he ever actually believed that he would be Julie’s soulmate. Stellar, wrecking ball, human angel Julie? There was no way. But part of him had _hoped_ anyways. And it’s only now that he sees the plain numbers that that hope finally shrivels up and dies. It’s been over two years since he got the sparks, and the likelihood that he’ll be her soulmate shrinks every day. There’s only a 29% chance that she’ll be his soulmate at this point, and that number feels like it might as well be zero.

(Maybe he should have taken a statistics class in college to understand how to properly read and interpret percentages, but he didn’t, so he’s going to spiral on the basis of his own ignorance.) 

He’s brought back to the present by Alex giggling softly at his phone, a sound Luke’s never heard him make before. And for the rest of the afternoon, he focuses on Alex’s gentle, shy joy and the lifetime of happiness that he can already see unfolding for his friend.

It’s only later that night, when he lets himself into Julie’s apartment to bring her dinner, that he feels the weight of those numbers sink back his chest. He sits next to her in bed, helping her keep the bowl of soup upright while he tells her about Alex, and the gentle, joyful smiles that she’s letting out through her pain are making his heart squirm.

She sags back against the pillow with a groan. “Have I thanked you for bringing me food all week? You’re kind of amazing.”

He sidesteps the compliment by pressing the back of his hand against her forehead, wincing at the heat. “I know I’m a broken record here, but your roommate coulda helped you out a bit. I’m always happy to come by but, like, getting you food when she’s already at the store? Bare minimum.”

Julie opens her mouth to answer, but a vicious cough comes out instead, and the roughness of the sound hurts _his_ chest. “She did come check on me earlier. To complain that I didn’t do the dishes this morning.”

They exchange a grimace. “When’s your lease up?”

“If I don’t renew, 34 days.”

He laughs at the specificity, but his brain is teetering on somber. It’s not the first time that her terrible roommate has come up, and it’s not the first time he’s thought about the easy solution to that issue, but in the past, the part of him that wanted to yell about his feelings for her kept whispering, _Moving in with her would be a mistake. The more you bind your lives together, the more impossible it will be to ever tell her the truth._ But his life is already bound to hers. And the odds are slanted towards this being the only time he gets to have her in his life this way. Eventually, she’ll get her own soulmate and she won’t have as much time for him anymore. So…

“Steve’s moving out next month. I’m looking for a subletter.”

She coughs roughly again and he quickly hands her her honey lemon tea. Her eyes rest on him over the rim of the mug, and he can’t get a read on her face. “I thought friends living together was a mistake.”

“Alex just said that cause he didn’t want to live with me and Reg. He finds us annoying in big doses.”

“Maybe _I_ find you annoying.”

But her smile is sweet, and it’s easy to shoot back, “40% annoying, 60% charming.”

“I didn’t agree to that.”

He pulls the bowl away with a mischievous grin. “Excuse you. After I drove on the 405 to bring you soup?”

“At 10 pm. The 405 at night isn’t a hardship.”

“Not making me feel appreciated here, boss. Maybe I’ll eat this myself.”

Before he can lift the spoon to his mouth, she puts her hand over his. “Then you’ll get sick.”

“I’ve been here twice a day for the past week. I’m definitely getting sick and you’re gonna have to nurse me back to health cause Steve is an ass. Next time we’re sick, be a lot easier if we live together.”

She laughs, and the sound sends a kick of joy through their bond. But as her eyes focus on his face, the smile leeches slightly out of her lips and her forehead wrinkles. The same face she used to make when she got overwhelmed by all her homework and put it off by writing a schedule for when she was going to do her homework.

“Does your place allow pets?” she asks.

“No, but lease is up in six months. I’m cool to move.” Belatedly, he realizes that he’s so eager to live with her that he hadn’t actually processed the question. “What kind of pet?”

“Cats.”

Huh.

She quirks an eyebrow. “Not a cat fan?”

He shrugs. “I dunno what to do with animals that don’t bark, but I’m cool to live with some cats. Not gonna be super involved though.”

Julie groans and collapses back on her pillows. “If you act all chill around the cats, they’re going to love you more. That’s how cats work.”

“Or they’ll love me more cause I’m so charming.”

She yanks the bowl from Luke’s hands with a pout. “Are you saying I’m not charming?”

The pout is unfair. How is he supposed to have a conversation with her when she looks like that? What he settles on is “I’m not gonna insult you when I’m trying to get you to move in with me.”

She studies him, and he’s not sure if the long pause is because she’s having some internal debate or if she’s just sick and unfocused, but she finally says, “Pitch it to me.”

“Us living together? Uhhh, we tolerate similar levels of mess, we both like a quiet apartment, and we spend all our time together anyways, so we’ll be cutting out a lot of commuting?”

Her eyes sparkle fondly. “No more driving over at 2 am to deliver a hug after a bad day?”

He does _not_ let himself dwell on the fact that that was the commute she focused on instead of the more obvious commute to the studio. “Yeah, we can just hug in our living room like normal people.” Her smile is softening, so he’s encouraged enough to continue. “When my current lease is up, I’m thinking a three-bedroom in the Valley so we can have a home studio.”

“Where in the Valley?”

“I assume you want to be close to your family, but not so close that Tía’s stopping by every day. So, NoHoish?”

Her smile is soft and dazed, like he’s right and his rightness means something to her, and the bond shimmers in his heart. But her voice is cautious as she replies, “Let’s see how living together in your current place is. If we don’t hate each other after a couple months, then sure.”

He can’t stop himself from tucking a loose, damp curl behind her ear. “I could never hate you.”

He’s expecting a sarcastic answer, but her voice is pure fondness as she replies, “Yeah, I don’t think I could hate you either.”

* * *

The trouble with moving in together is that, while he’s always known abstractly that they fit well together, he now has a lot of extra concrete information about how well suited they are, and it’s very hard to not mentally add things to a list.

She likes to wash the dishes; he likes to dry them.

Both of them prefer to do big shopping trips at the grocery store every other week rather than smaller trips throughout the week.

They have similar standards for hygiene in the apartment (which is to say that everything is a mess but nothing is dirty.)

 ~~Neither of them wants kids.~~ (Not relevant!)

They both do their best creative work after the rest of the world has gone to bed, and most nights find them trading the headphones attached to their instruments back and forth as they play for each other.

They watch similar TV shows, and soon have a schedule: when they get home from rehearsal, they cook dinner together, with one of them inevitably prolonging the process when a musical idea strikes (especially when Luke almost bowls Julie over by sliding across the kitchen in his eagerness to play something for her on his acoustic.) Afterwards, they curl up on the couch with food and an episode of something, though they usually talk over it. Over the course of several months and loads of laundry, his few shirts with sleeves gravitate from the drawer of winter clothes in his room to the drawer of loungewear in hers, so their nights usually find her wearing one of his shirts and resting her head on his shoulder and passing the gentle vibrations of her laughter into his body, and no he doesn’t want to talk about it.

Rudely, their friends decide to act like their living situation is weird. The first time they come over and see Julie wearing Luke’s purple shirt, Reggie blurts out, “Are you two finally dating??”

Luke can only be grateful that Julie is so confused by the question that she doesn’t seem to linger on the phrasing. “What?”

Flynn heaves a sigh and nods at the shirt.

“It’s comfy.” Julie shrugs and disappears into the kitchen.

Before Luke can even glare at Reggie, Flynn smacks the bassist’s arm. “What did I say?” she hisses before following after Julie.

But somehow worse is how, every single time he comes over, Alex calmly surveils the two of them and whispers to Luke, “You realize that you two are more domestic than me and Willie, right?”

“It’s not like that,” Luke insists, and Alex just shakes his head.

But it’s not like that. And it can’t be like that.

Because even if she felt the same way (which she doesn’t), they’re writing partners, bandmates, best friends, roommates…

And then cat co-parents.

Luke is very sure that he won’t get attached to the cats. He doesn’t have anything against cats. He just doesn’t get what people are meant to _do_ with them. His experience of cats is that they sit around looking soft but untouchable, and occasionally they glare at him like he’s the scum of the earth. He just doesn’t get the appeal. If he wanted to be judged, he would go talk to Alex or Flynn.

“I’m really not going to be helpful here,” he cautions as he trails after Julie into the shelter. “They all look like cats to me.”

Like there was actually a chance he’d turn her down when she asked him to come. “Trevor Wilson” has been visiting from Indiana for the last few weeks and, after a couple of very tense, forced lunches arranged by Reggie and Alex, Luke and Bobby have patched things up enough that they’re trying to cobble together a mini-album for Sunset Curve. Normally Luke would want Julie around to give feedback, but she and Flynn have been busy developing material so they can potentially launch Double Trouble. Luke loves that they’re both expanding their musical horizons and working on different projects, but he hasn’t spent as much time with her lately.

If meeting some cats will get him quality Julie time, he’ll look at a million cats. 

“The shelter just needs to know that I’m not springing cats on my roommate. You don’t need to have opinions on the cats.” Though there’s an all-too familiar look in her eyes. The look she gets when she knows she’s going to win a musical argument before she even makes it.

But he thinks he’s holding strong. The volunteer (who definitely has a glimmer of recognition in his eyes when he first meets them) shows them a few different bonded pairs, and Luke remains firm in his stance. They are cats. Their ears are shaped like triangles, their eyes are very big, and they’re soft—he’s not denying they’re cute. But he still doesn’t _get_ it.

And then they get to the last pair.

Julie says that these cats are tabbies, which doesn’t mean anything to Luke. All he sees is a pile of fluffy brown and black stripes at the back of the kennel. Until the volunteer unlocks the door, and half of the pile of fluff comes to life. A stocky cat pulls himself from the cuddle pile and swaggers towards them, like he’s a bouncer at a club trying to assert his authority and decide if they’re allowed in. Only…

He has a small brown spot on the tip of his otherwise pink nose, which renders him too adorable to pull off the threatening pose he’s attempting.

Julie immediately crouches down and holds out a finger to him. The cat sniffs along the finger and then bumps his nose against it, before ducking his head under her hand. Permitting her to scratch the top of his head. As her fingers gently work through the thick fur, she lets out a tiny, happy squeak. “Luke, he’s friendly,” she whispers with awe.

He’s not sure about cats, but this incredibly soft version of Julie that he’s never seen before immediately captures his heart. He crouches next to her and glances at the other half of the fluff pile at the back of the cage. The cat lifts his head, displaying a delicate striped face and giant, nervous eyes. Slowly stretching himself up onto his paws, his ears swirl wildly in every direction as he surveys the two humans. No judgment in his eyes, just timid fear. Luke holds out a finger toward the cat but, despite the several feet of space between them, the cat retracts his head.

So Luke turns his attention back to the other cat. Having gotten bolder, the cat is now winding in a crouched circle around Julie’s legs, desperately chasing her fingers for more pets, and she lets out a giggle. “Slow down! I’m trying!” As she scratches at the side of his mouth, the cat starts to purr and Julie gasps.

Oh. These are the ones.

Her shining eyes turn to Luke, and his heart skips in his chest. “He likes me!” she squeals.

“Course he likes you. You’re charming.”

The volunteer chuckles, watching them like… oh. Right. Of course, _that’s_ what they look like. As if there aren’t enough vague public rumors swirling all around them already.

But before Luke can worry about that too much, something soft, fluffy, and tentative brushes against his outstretched finger. The second cat has approached. He pulls back to look at Luke’s finger and sniffs the air around it like he’s checking for bombs, then nudges into it a second time. Luke scratches at the cat’s cheek, hoping he’s being gentle enough. Suddenly very aware of how small and fragile the cat seems in comparison with a dog. But the cat leans heavily into his touch, a soft but insistent demand for firmer scratches, and almost topples over.

“Careful there, Little Dude,” Luke chuckles.

He can feel Julie’s smug gaze before he even looks at her. She’s trying but failing to bite down the grin on her lips.

“He came to me,” Luke tries.

“Mhm.”

The cat glides his chin on top of Luke’s finger, and Luke can’t keep back the tiny gasp that slips from his lips. “His chin is so soft!”

He can feel Julie’s smugness again, but he’s not looking at it. He’s too enthralled by _how soft this tiny chin is._

“His name is Joseph,” the volunteer puts in smoothly. 

“Pft. He’s not a Joseph. He looks like an Alto.”

Julie shoots him a look again. “So you’re not interested in the cats, but you _are_ naming them.”

“I mean, you can’t call him Joseph.” He studies the other cat, who’s resting a paw on Julie’s knee to get easier access to her hand. “He looks like a Treble.”

Julie strokes the cat’s cheek and nods in Luke’s direction without looking at him. “You know what he looks like? Like he’s full of shit. Yes, he does.”

The narrative as Luke will continue to tell it for years is that the cats slowly wormed their way into his heart over the course of months. The narrative as Julie will continue to tell it to their friends, family, and the fucking press is that, two weeks after they bring the cats home, he leaves his acoustic unattended on the couch for thirty seconds and comes back to find Treble trying to play the strings with his mouth.

“Bad! You’re gonna hurt yourself, Angry Bro.” He shakes a finger in the cat’s direction, hoping to spook him away from doing it again. Treble doesn’t respond to the criticism, staunchly pretending like Luke isn’t in the room.

As Julie scoops up the misbehaving cat, she quirks an eyebrow at Luke. “You’re not mad about the guitar?”

“I don’t care about the guitar! I don’t want him cutting his mouth.”

Her mouth falls open in delight.

Oh, fuck. “I mean—"

She strokes the cat’s head smugly. “Your dad’s such a softie, isn’t he?” 

“I’m just respecting Treble’s authority. I would lecture Alto.”

As if determined to disprove Luke’s point, Alto chooses that moment to come and rub the side of his snout against one of the strings. Luke nudges the cat away, and then looks up to find Julie watching him with a fiercely gentle expression that he doesn’t really understand.

“ _So_ full of shit” is all she says.

So yeah, Luke still doesn’t really know what people do with cats in general. But he loves these ridiculous fluffy demons.

What he doesn’t really anticipate is how much the cats change things.

In part because they now co-own a bonded pair of cats who have each bonded to a different person. They can never separate the cats, and they can never separate the cats from their respective humans, so the four of them are bound together into a strange, inseparable unit. And even though being part of that unit often means that he’s exposed to a soft, loving Julie who almost constantly makes him want to confess his feelings… any chance of telling Julie how he feels goes out the window. There are too many strands of their life woven together. If he throws a hand grenade into that, there are too many casualties. Maybe he should have told her years ago, before everything got more complicated, but he can’t now.

But the cats change more than just the practicalities of how much of their lives are shared. It just takes him a while to figure out _what_ exactly has shifted.

When the band is on their first major tour, he and Julie get into a raging argument over the _fucking set list_ , the kind of fight that turns nasty because they’ve been on the road together for seven weeks and haven’t had space or sufficient sleep. Even though they know they’re blowing it out of proportion, they still go almost a week barely able to speak to or even look at each other when they’re not on stage. Until they’re in Columbus, about to do their sound check, standing staunchly on opposite sides of the stage, when they both get a series of texts from Flynn:

_**okay, to preface this, the vet doesn’t think it’s too serious  
but alto escaped onto the balcony and fell and he might have broken something  
he’ll be in the hospital for a few days, he’s in getting x-rays now, i’ll update you the instant i know what’s happening** _

There are several frantic apology texts that follow, but Luke barely reads them. He immediately looks up to find Julie and she’s already looking at him. Without pause, they rush across the stage and fling their arms around each other. The fight evaporates, and all that exists is his and Julie’s joint fear for the health of their furry, wriggly escape artist, and this bond between them that constricts in his chest.

It takes several minutes of desperate hugging for Luke to realize that the bond he’s feeling isn’t the soulmate bond. It’s a bond with no supernatural source, purely mundane, fully shared, and completely theirs. Existing solely in their hearts.

Family has always been a complicated thing for him. He doesn’t dislike his parents, but he’s never felt the familial bond with them that Julie feels with Ray, Carlos, and Victoria. Family for him has meant Reggie and Alex and Julie. Family has been the band.

But this bond with Julie and the cats pulses in a way that feels both similar and completely different. Holding Julie and worrying about Alto (and worrying about how confused Treble must be) feels like a completely different type of family. The band is the family that made him who he is, that raised him, that grounds him, that he will always think of as his home. This weird Molina-Patterson unit feels like the family he grows into, that pushes him to fly, that guides him into his future, that fills a different part of his heart and soul.

A family he can’t and won’t risk for anything. 

The whole incident shakes Luke to his core. Alto isn’t too badly injured—he seems to have decided that gravity didn’t apply to him. But during those next couple nights, when Luke and Julie stay awake together on the tour bus holding each other and listening to Alex and Reggie’s snores, he realizes that he’s been thinking about being in love with Julie as an accident that he stumbled into and just needs to pull himself out of eventually. An aberration that he’ll outgrow when she gets her soulmate and his heart finally accepts what his mind has known for years.

This is the first time that Luke understands that being in love with Julie is like falling into quicksand, and there may not be an easy exit. If there is an exit at all.

When Julie finally drifts to sleep on his shoulder, he pulls out his notebook and the beginning of what will become the chorus of “Finally Free” stumbles onto the paper.

_I got a spark in me  
And you're a part of me  
Now 'til eternity_

When he presents the song to the band weeks later, Alex shoots him a funny look, like he senses that something’s afoot, but can’t put his finger on it. Luke just smiles innocently back.

* * *

For the next three years, Luke tries to shut up that part of him that’s in love with Julie, bottling those feelings up and setting them aside. And for the most part it works (or so he tells himself.) Because for the most part, he is living his dream life. Julie is his soulmate and, while other people might be more chill about their soulmates, he wants her at the center of his world and all tied up in it. Most of the time, he’s so overwhelmed by how lucky he is to share this life with her that he doesn’t mope. 

Much.

The weight of all that baggage between them has become too heavy to allow for casual flirting, so while there are moments that he finds tense and loaded, they’re as one-sided as his soulmate bond. Times when she’ll make a comment without realizing that it goes straight into his heart, or times when she’ll sing too close during “Finally Free” and the combination of the lyrics and the bond almost makes him pass out on stage.

But it’s one-sided. Purely his own mis-experience of innocent things. The flirty banter they lived off of in college is something they both actively avoid now, so they protect themselves from mutually tension-y situations. 

For the most part.

With just, like, a couple exceptions.

The first happens on their second continental tour. Luke is lying in his berth at night, the tour bus rocking underneath him as he watches nanny cam footage of Treble and Alto cuddling on the couch. (Look, he misses his sons, okay? He’s not going to apologize for that.)

All of a sudden, he feels a sharp jerk where the soul bond meets his chest, like a string is tugging out his heart, an empty ache that goes beyond sadness.

He’s not really surprised, because today is the start of Rose’s birth month.

It’s the first time a tour has coincided with that month, the first time Julie has been away from her family and the studio space where she keeps her yearly rituals, and he knew it would be hard for her.

He got her cookies, but they were definitely the wrong kind—some random Pepperidge Farm thing he found at the 7-Eleven. The hot chocolate though, he was so sure he’d nailed. Ray had pointed him toward the Chocolate Cortés that is “the only right chocolate for hot chocolate,” and Julie had lit up like the sun when Luke had given it to her.

… until they realized their induction burner was broken and they had no way to actually make the hot chocolate.

As always, the universe conspires against Luke.

Slipping out of his berth, he staggers across the shuddering floor of the moving bus and hovers next to the berth across from his. “You up?” he whispers.

He immediately winces at the phrasing, but she’s not in a state to read it the wrong way. “Yeah.”

“Can I come in?”

In answer, the curtain pulls open. She’s curled up, almost in the fetal position, and staring up at him through shimmering eyes. He immediately slips into the berth and wraps his arms around her. Without hesitation, her hands find his waist and cling to him, and she buries her face into his chest. She doesn’t say anything, and neither does he, because there’s nothing to say. All he can do is hold her as tightly as he can, and whenever he feels dampness on his shirt, he rubs soothing circles into the base of her neck.

Eventually, they both fall asleep, and in the morning, the guys are polite enough not to mention that Luke wakes up in the wrong part of the bus.

The next night, Julie glances at him as she crawls into her bunk and pulls back the curtain questioningly, like she’s holding open a door and asking if he wants to come through. He almost falls on the floor in his rush to follow her.

The next night, she nods like she’s inviting him to share a mic, and the night after that, she just leaves the curtain open for him.

The guys don’t say anything (at the time. A few months later, Alex points out that Julie never once asked him or Reggie if they would hold her through the night for four weeks straight. Luke ignores him.)

When she can’t sleep, they work on that year’s song while he ~~spoons~~ holds her. On nights when her grief is sharper and the weight of her memories heavier, they work silently. Communicating solely by writing in the notebook without exchanging words or hums. On nights when she’s feeling better, they whisper back and forth into each others’ ears as they craft the song.

None of it feels charged, because he’s there to keep her company when she’s grieving and homesick. His feelings for her couldn’t be less relevant. But it goes on for the whole month. At some point it has to stop, right? They’re not just going to share her berth for the rest of the tour. But he’s not sure what’s going to happen to change it.

Until one morning, the aggressive rumble of the bus hitting a pothole wakes them up early.

Normally, they don’t regain consciousness until they need to get up, so there’s no awkwardness in the morning. They just immediately flee the bed. But now they’re awake _and_ lying in bed together, and the feelings that fall so heavily on her at night haven’t woken up yet. So they’re just lying on their sides, facing each other and sharing a pillow, with their heads so close that he can’t see her face but can feel her breath on his neck and count the narrow stripes on the headscarf that protects her curls from the pillow.

She reaches out a tentative hand to swipe a piece of lint from his wrist. But instead of retreating, her pointer finger starts to trace the vein of his forearm like she’s never seen it before. It slows down as she nears his elbow, like she’s waiting for him to move away or tell her to stop, but her gentle touch has left a trail of fire in its wake and Luke’s quite prepared to burn. So her finger continues its journey up over his bicep, sliding across his skin until it reaches the sleeve hole of his shirt. He holds his breath for a moment, worried that the movement of refilling his lungs will discourage her from… he’s not sure what. What does he want her to do?

But he doesn’t get a chance to find out, because her finger gently swirls around in a way that hits him unexpectedly in the heart, before it runs all the way down his arm to the back of his hand. Her pointer hesitates for only a split second before it slowly retraces the circuit up and then down his arm.

Her touch is so soft that he almost can’t feel it, and yet it’s all he can think about. So light that it almost registers as a tickle, and yet he has to bite his lip to keep from shivering. At first, it’s just the single finger. Then the middle finger joins. Then it’s her knuckles skimming up and down his arms, burning a path of electric shocks.

He’s utterly, confusingly enthralled by this touch that doesn’t mean anything and also means everything. Simultaneously completely innocent and completely intimate.

The next time her fingers are on his bicep, he rotates his forearm. The position is awkward, but now when her fingers glide down his arm, they run into his palm. He catches them and strokes them with his own. Her breath hitches before he releases her hand and lets it resume its journey.

He doesn’t know how long they lie there, with her fingers trailing up and down his arm and him caressing her fingers, but he can feel the air between them growing heavier, can hear their breathing getting more labored in the small echo chamber they’ve made with their heads.

She doesn’t look at him and he doesn’t look at her. Plausible deniability only goes so far, and if her eyes turn toward his, he won’t be able to stop himself from leaning in, from seeing if she wants to kiss him.

He does, however, shift closer to her, and the next time her hand runs into his, he flips his hand over hers and starts tracing his knuckles up her arm. Her skin is impossibly soft, so warm and smooth and _Julie_ that it feels like a dream. He tries to mimic her touch, letting his fingers dance up and down her arm in different patterns with different firmness, shifting in response to her breaths. Gentle butterflies flutter in his stomach and the soulmate bond buzzes, and if he weren’t putting all of his energy and focus into the soft trace of his knuckles against her, he would probably be shaking.

On his next circuit of her arm, the faint rumble of the bus bumps his hand further along that he meant it to go, and it brushes against the hem of her tank top strap. Her breath hitches sharply, and his hand stops.

For what feels like the longest second of his life.

But before he can figure out what to do next, Alex’s phone blares the morning alarm.

Reggie groans, and Alex grumbles, and Luke yanks back his hand like it’s on fire. Julie sits up, refusing to look at him, and so he doesn’t look at her as he flees to his berth to get changed.

It was nothing. Nothing happened.

But that night, she shuts the curtain behind her when she gets into bed, and he sleeps in his own berth for the first time in almost a month.

The song from that year’s tour stays in his notebook, unfinished. And the next year that they’re on tour during her mother’s birth month, he holds Julie until she falls asleep and then slips back into his berth, avoiding the morning entirely.

* * *

The second exception to the “all tension between them is one-sided” rule happens five years after the sparks, at Alex and Willie’s wedding. And it starts from an unexpected source.

“Why do your pants emphasize your butt so much??” Alex cries.

“It can’t be that bad,” Reggie insists as he rushes over from the other side of the hotel room. He spins Luke around… and freezes. “Oh, shit. No, it is.”

Luke leaps away and leans against the wall, shielding his back from view. “Stop looking at it!”

As if he didn’t feel self-conscious enough already in a suit. Honestly, the things he does for Alex…

Crossing his arms over his pink suit jacket, Alex fixes him with a look of desperation. “Not to be a groomzilla, but today is supposed to be about me and Willie, not your love for leg day. Can you please try to be casual about your butt at my wedding?”

“I wasn’t planning on not being casual about my butt?”

But Reggie and Alex exchange a worried glance, and that concern doesn’t vanish from Alex’s face until they get to the venue.

So it’s not like Luke is unaware of his wardrobe issues, but he forgets. Because as soon as the garden wedding gets started, he’s busy crying as he watches the man who’s as good as his brother marrying his soulmate. And then it’s time for Willie and Alex’s first dance, and Luke and Julie are serenading them with a duet of “Can’t Help Falling In Love.” (A drunk Alex had requested it at his bachelor’s party, and then immediately leaned over and whispered loudly in Luke’s ear, “I’m being a wingman!” as if Luke hadn’t figured that out himself.) As Luke and Julie sing the painfully romantic lyrics to one another, the soulmate bond burns away at him and it takes all the control he’s learned over the past five years to keep himself playing and singing, instead of flopping onto the floor and screaming.

But once he’s gotten through the song, he thinks he’s home free.

And then Julie bounces over and seizes his hand. “Dance with me?”

Luke still hasn’t learned how to dance, but he’s not about to say “no” to Julie Molina, especially when she’s in formal wear. Besides, the DJ just started some random, high energy pop song, so it seems like as safe a time as ever to dance with the love of his life at a wedding.

... until they reach the dance floor, and the song abruptly cuts off, replaced with “A Kiss to Build a Dream On.” Which is decidedly less safe. Luke glances at the DJ stand, only to find Reggie leaning against the table, raising a smug eyebrow at Luke as he slips $20 to the DJ.

Luke mouths a silent, furious “Dude!” but Reggie puts a dramatic, delicate hand to his chest and bats his eyelashes innocently. Luke shoots him a middle finger behind Julie’s back. Mouthing “You’re welcome,” Reggie skips off to find the grooms.

And then Julie drags Luke’s attention back to her by draping her arms around his neck. She’s standing far from him, like she did at the house party five years ago, and he laughs, gently grips her waist, and tugs her closer.

“Not leaving room for Jesus this time?” she asks. So he’s not the only one who remembers that dance.

“This isn’t a middle school dance; it’s a secular wedding. No Jesus on the RSVP list.”

She giggles and the bond does that shimmering thing again. He’s sure that the smile on his face is embarrassing, but she’s smiling right back so he can’t bring himself to care.

It’s only now that he really registers how close they’re standing. He swallows, Adams apple bobbing sharply against the collar of his shirt, and her gaze falls to his throat. After only a brief hesitation, her hands slide down and untie his bowtie. The pressure of the fabric around his neck lessens, but there’s still too much constriction. With a gentle chuckle, she unbuttons the top buttons of his shirt too.

If she notices the way he stops breathing at the gesture, she politely ignores it. “You looked like you were choking.” Then her hands drifts to his shoulder. “I can barely recognize you when your arms are covered,” she teases.

“Wanna know a secret? The vest and shirt are sleeveless.”

“What??” Unbuttoning his jacket, she tugs it open enough to reveal that, yeah, he’s sleeveless under the jacket. She cackles in disbelief. “This whole suit is so ridiculous,” she huffs fondly as she wraps her arms around his neck again.

“Why, what else is wrong with it?”

Her eyes bug and she shakes her head. “Nothing!”

But she won’t meet his eyes, so he squeezes her waist gently to force her attention. “Babe, c’mon.”

She looks up so she can properly level the full force of her pout at him, and once her eyes are on him, she relents. “It’s just that the pants are very… well-tailored.”

It takes a moment, but then it clicks. “You checking out my ass?”

“No!” But he knows her tells, and she knows he knows. She rolls her eyes, but it’s forced—a performance she’s putting on to try to distract from the compliment. “I walked up the aisle right after you. There was nowhere else for me to look because of how _absurdly_ well-tailored the pants are.”

It’s not the love confession he daydreams of, but if the woman he’s in love with is admiring the results of his possibly excessive gym routine, he is absolutely going to revel in it. “The back of my head is up here, boss.” He doesn’t even try to shield the gloat in his voice.

“Whatever, see if I ever compliment you again.” 

“You didn’t compliment me. You were making fun of my suit. I actually feel insulted.” 

She cuts him a look he can’t decipher, then does the performative eye roll again. “You don’t need me to tell you that you’re hot. You already know that.” Yanking him in closer, she rests her cheek on his chest. Her attempt to hide is obvious, but his heart warms at the gentle gesture anyways, and the bond crackles softly. When she’s standing this close, it’s hard for his hands to sit anywhere on her back without accidentally touching her skin—the open back of her dress is a minefield. He keeps his hands firmly at her sides, his elbows sticking out much farther than is natural in his desperate attempt to avoid touching her.

He’s too overwhelmed by the sheer amount of Julie in his space to have control over his mouth, so he blurts out, “Do you need me to compliment you?” Only it comes out much quieter than it should, and far too close to her ear. Way too intimate, and she shivers under his hands.

“Do you have compliments to give?” she whispers back.

He leans closer, his nose grazing her ear, and the tiny brush of contact leaves him dizzy. “I can tell you you’re beautiful, but that’s not news.”

She lifts her head. “It’s not?”

“Beautiful’s your default.” He nods at her face. “This is just a different flavor.”

She’s giving him a shy smile that’s making his heart, or maybe the bond—he can’t even tell the difference at this point—wriggle with joy. He’s suddenly even more aware of the silky fabric under his fingertips, of the romantic music sparkling around them, of this weird dreamlike bubble they’re caught in as their gaze refuses to uncouple.

Chuckling nervously, he tries to diffuse the tension. “Now do you feel bad about treating me like a piece of meat?” He hopes his voice comes out light, not too heavy from that unexpected pain he still carries from that day in the library. That old knowledge that he’ll only ever be a flirting partner to her.

His teasing tone must work because she volleys back playfully, “Blame your tailor.” 

“These are off the rack, actually.” Her mouth drops open. “What can I say, babe? Got an ass that won’t quit.”

“This is why I don’t compliment you.”

“Just tell me I got a pretty personality.”

“You don’t, though. You’re insufferable.”

“So I _am_ just a piece of meat to you.”

She just shrugs in response. He lets the confirmation sink into his gut, before she distracts him by gesturing her head around the room. “Okay, let’s do the wedding thing.”

“What wedding thing?”

Her eyes scrutinize his face more intently than seems warranted given her casual tone. “You know, the thing people do when they go to weddings and they talk about what their wedding is going to be like.”

Luke nods, but… “Not actually sold on marriage. Like, lifelong commitment is important to me, but not the institution that comes with it.”

She gazes at him softly before she nods, and he feels like he got the right answer on a quiz he didn’t know he was taking. “I want some sort of paperwork. Legal protections and all that, but yeah. The institution has some baggage I’m not sure I want to bring to a relationship.”

“So, what? Domestic partnership?”

“Ideally. If my partner’s okay with that.”

“I could be down for that,” he blurts out. “F-for me, I mean,” he adds quickly.

But it’s too late. She leans in closer, a smirk tilting her lips. “I think you need at least one other person for a partnership.”

He blames what happens next on the way the one-sided bond is sparking in his chest, rendering him lightheaded and unable to stop himself from saying, “You got someone in mind?” And then dropping his gaze very briefly to her mouth.

“Someone who wants to put up with an insufferable ass?”

“Insufferable ass that won’t quit.”

Now her gaze falls to his mouth, and she licks her lips, and their faces are so close as he holds her, hands slipping onto her bare back as she drifts closer. She shakes her head slightly. “I don’t know many people with bad enough taste.” And yet her lips are moving towards his. 

“But you do know some?” He leans in.

“One or two,” she whispers back. He’s not actually following any of the words they’re saying to one another anymore. All that exists is their lips and the space between them and his fingers on her back and her hands around his neck. It feels inevitable that the space will collapse, that they’ll bridge the gap, but…

They have cats. An apartment. A band. _Two families._ It would be one thing to kiss a beautiful woman at a wedding; it’s quite another to kiss Julie. Maybe if there were a chance that he could be her soulmate. But it’s been five years, and that 97% figure won’t leave his head or his heart. This bond between them will only ever be one-sided and kissing her is just going to break what remains of his heart. So he blurts out the first mood-killing thing that comes to mind. “I think Treble did a massive shit this morning.”

… someday, he _will_ learn to diffuse the tension between them without bringing up poop. But not today, apparently.

She blinks rapidly, her neck retreating to create space between them. “Yeah, I emptied the litter box. It was pretty impressive.”

“He’s a champion pooper.”

“Sure is.”

The change in topic is as subtle as an axe, and it leaves them unable to find anything else to talk about. The rest of the dance is stiff, awkward, and silent, and when the song comes to an end, she all but sprints out of his arms. He has to slip away from the reception for twenty minutes to catch his breath.

* * *

What he doesn’t expect is the gut punch three months later. Willie and Alex invite him over to their place, ostensibly to watch the wedding video. And while he knows that that’s probably a flimsy excuse for something else, because no one else has been invited, he doesn’t really think it’s going to be important.

Before Luke can even ask what’s actually going on, Alex pushes him firmly onto the couch. Luke vaguely registers that there’s a laptop with an external hard drive on the coffee table in front of him, but before he can process it, Alex sticks a finger under his nose.

“Willie and I spent a lot of money hiring a second videographer for our wedding _and_ paying for the raw footage to get this, so you are going to sit there and watch the thing without complaining.”

Luke’s mouth drops open, and he settles on, “You’re very pushy today.”

Willie smirks as he lounges back on the other couch, watching his husband with unabashed appreciation. “It’s pretty hot, right?”

“Uh, I dunno that I should comment on that?”

Alex clears his throat as he pulls up a video and clicks play.

Only then does Luke see what the clip is. Him and Julie playing and singing “Can’t Help Falling In Love” at the wedding.

Watching it is bizarre. Luke has never thought of himself as a still person, but right now, he feels completely still. He’s gotten used to having his bond go into overdrive every time he sings with Julie. Watching them sing together tugs at his heart, but it doesn’t set him on fire, and it takes some time to adjust.

But he quickly gets distracted, because what the fuck is he doing with his face?

Julie spends the first couple of verses singing out to the crowd, eyes mostly toward the happy couple. (And he can tell whenever she’s looking at them, because her smile softens and glows.) They rehearsed enough that she doesn’t need to look at her keyboard or at Luke, getting sufficient cues from her peripheral vision.

The same should have been true of him. But he’s watching her.

Not solely. His eyes keep darting to the couple, and occasionally down at his fingerboard, but they’re constantly pulled back to her like she’s the center of gravity, and the expression on his face is something he’s never seen before. Unabashedly adoring, in a way that makes him feel like he’s intruding on something, even though it is literally his own damn face.

He’s watched recordings of their performances before, but both he and Julie tend to play up their on-stage chemistry. He can always see past it, like spotting the seams of wallpaper. The tightness in his jaw, the overexaggeration of her smiles, the broadness of his winks, the physicality of her laughter. Everything slightly overdone and overthought.

But this?

The on-screen Luke’s eyes are wide and awed, his smile small and hushed, his jaw loose, his whole face dazed. Jesus Christ.

He points a trembling finger at the screen. “Is that—do I normally…” He can’t even finish the question.

“The heart eyes? I would say this is more intense than normal,” Alex replies tactfully.

But Willie snorts, which is discouraging.

When they reach the chorus, On-Screen Luke does an exaggerated slide on the guitar, letting the string squeak slightly to draw her attention. The musical equivalent of pulling a pigtail. As soon as she looks at him, his whole face lights up. She leans toward him and playfully scrunches her nose, and a ridiculous smile overtakes his face in response.

Luke thinks that’s the peak of his embarrassment, but then they reach the third verse.

_Take my hand  
Take my whole life, too  
For I can't help falling in love with you_

On-Screen Luke’s face is open and raw, confessing the lyrics directly to Julie, so obviously believing every single word he sings. So blatant, so honest, so—

He slaps the space bar to pause the video and pops to his feet. His hand twitches, longing for the dart board in the studio. For _something_ to do. But there’s nothing, so he hisses out, “Fuck!” and grips the back of his head.

“… Luke?”

Luke gestures at the screen. “That’s how I look at her? Like, all the time?”

“Yeah…” Alex rises nervously to his feet, exchanging a glance with his bewildered husband. “I feel like you’re misinterpreting something.”

There’s a familiar pull at the back of his eyes, and Luke tenses his jaw, trying to keep the tears at bay. “She knows,” he forces out. “She knows how—” He chokes on the words and has to turn away. Bracing his hands on the windowsill, he stares out at the busy West Hollywood street below them. As if seeing other people leading their regular lives will soothe him, instead of just emphasize that his world is falling apart. How are all these people going about their daily lives like his stomach isn’t being ripped out?

He knows that Julie knows about the vibe between them. That unspoken tension that runs between them like a string. A string normally left slack and easily ignored. But then there are times—like in her berth, like at the wedding—when the string is pulled taut, drawing them together and bringing their attention to the fact that their relationship isn’t like the relationship they have with their other bandmates.

But it’s a vibe, and he’s always tried to act like it was only a vibe. Taking his cues from her, playing it off like it’s simple chemistry. But if he looks at her like that?

Alex’s hand on his shoulder makes him jump. “Julie knows what?”

Luke turns his back on the window—fuck those people—and sits back on the sill. He gestures at the screen again, averting his eyes from his own face. “If I look at her like that, she knows how I feel.”

He forces his gaze at Alex because… they haven’t really talked about his feelings. Not since the penguin call, not really. There’s been a lot of teasing about his relationship with Julie and how platonic Alex and Reggie think it isn’t, but they haven’t talked about his feelings.

They know. He knows they know. But not talking about it is the flimsy protection he’s offered himself. If he never says aloud that he’s in love with her, never gives that feeling life outside his own body, then maybe it’ll fade away eventually.

But Willie surprises him by laughing softly, which seems very inappropriate considering that Luke’s life falling apart. “Did you see how _she_ looks at you?”

Luke finally darts his eyes at the screen again, deliberately avoiding his own face, and jerks his shoulder in a shrug. “That’s how Julie always looks.” A violent snort rips out of Alex’s nose, which is, again, super inappropriate. “Dude!”

He shoves off the windowsill, and Alex trails semi-apologetically after him. “Sorry, but… no, that’s how she looks around _you_.”

“That’s her regular face.”

“Luke, I know you think you’re the Julie expert, but one thing you are never going to know is what she’s like when she’s not around you. You have to take our word for it. She doesn’t look at us like that, or Reggie or Flynn.” Alex inhales deeply. “She didn’t even look at Nick like that.”

It takes Luke a moment to remember who Nick is, because it’s been five years. The spectre of rejection has stayed with Luke, but Nick himself is just this bland dude Julie dated back in college. Part of his brain wants to cling to the significance of that—while she’s gone on dates since then, nothing’s stuck. But it’s because of their touring schedule. It’s the same issue Reggie’s had. The same issue Luke has pretended to have.

“Bro,” Willie says softly. “You get that we’re showing you this cause your faces are the same, right?”

Luke glances at the video again, but his eyes land on his own hideously open face, and he flicks his gaze away. “She doesn’t feel that way about me.”

“Yes, she does,” Alex insists.

“If I look at her like that, then she knows how I feel. And if she hasn’t said anything, it’s because she doesn’t feel the same.”

“Lotta assumptions there,” Willie offers quietly.

“What do you guys want from me here?” Luke groans, exasperated, as he paces back and forth.

Alex sinks back on the arm of the couch and huffs out a heavy sigh. “Look, I get that you’re both waiting for your sparks to confirm before you start a relationship, but I think waiting is making you both miserable, and you should just go for it now.”

Luke stops short. “What do you mean, _confirm?_ ”

“That you’re soulmates?”

Luke ducks his head because he’s not that good of an actor. Now would probably be the time to come clean, but… if he tells Alex that Julie is his soulmate, Alex will take it as evidence and they’re going to keep talking about this. Excavating the reality of his soulmate situation hurts in ways that Luke still can’t handle, and he’s not opening it up to public debate. But he’s not about to lie, so he focuses on the part that’s true. “I’m not gonna be her soulmate.”

“What? Luke, of course you will.”

“I won’t,” he snaps, letting some of his pain flood his face, hoping his serious tone will close this discussion.

Undecided between sympathy and frustration, Alex’s eyes soften as his head shakes. “What on earth are you basing that on?”

“It’s private.” Luke’s voice catches, and he winces.

Alex opens his mouth, but Willie’s voice drifts in. “Alex.” The use of his name, instead of the usual “bro,” “hotdog,” or “babe,” stops the drummer in his tracks.

For a moment. Then he whirls on Luke, voice… angry? “Wait, so you’ve set up your life so the woman you’re in love with is your bandmate, your writing partner, your roommate, and your freaking cat co-parent… and you think she’s going to get a different soulmate?”

“What did you think I was doing?”

“We all assumed the two of you were getting your ducks in a row while you waited for the sparks! I didn’t realize…” Alex trails off, jaw still working as he tries to find the words. Then his eyes cut directly to Luke’s and he spits out, “What the fuck, dude?”

Alex doesn’t tend to get angry. Sarcastic, yes, but truly, fully angry? “Why are you _mad?_ ”

“Because you’re my family! And apparently you’ve spent the last seven years making sure you have a front row seat to your own heartbreak. Why would you put yourself through that?”

“I’m not putting myself through anything! All of that stuff with Jules? That’s what I want for my life.”

“You want more.”

Luke whirls on him, but Willie once again cuts in. “Alex.” This time, his voice is sharp, and Alex’s face falls.

“Sorry, that was a shitty thing to say. I didn’t mean… Obviously, romance isn’t more than what you two have. I meant—you want another thing too.”

Luke inhales shakily, searching for the words to express the truth he’s worn in his heart for the past five years. “Bandmates, writing partners, best friends, roommates, goddamn Alto and Treble—that’s the stuff that’s mandatory for me. That’s how I _need_ her in my life. Dating her? That’s optional. I won’t risk what I have with her for anything, not even that.”

Alex and Willie exchange a glance, Alex’s face still tense and frustrated, but Willie’s melting. Like he thinks Luke is a cute puppy. He raises an eyebrow at Alex—continuing a conversation Luke wasn’t there for—and Alex quirks a smile back and shakes his head before turning back at Luke.

“Can you please just look at Julie’s face? _Actually_ look at it.”

With a groan, Luke stalks over to the couch and forces his eyes to the screen.

On-Screen Julie is smiling at On-Screen Luke in that gentle way she does whenever they perform love songs, her head leaning towards him, nose mid-scrunch. It’s soft, it’s sweet, it’s… the face she makes when that string is pulled taut.

A faint flare of hope runs through his gut before that insistent internal voice screams “97%”, and he bites his lip and looks away. “We’ve known each other for seven years. If I was gonna be her soulmate, it would’ve happened already.”

“Luke—”

“Alex, she’s the love of my life.” A sentence that should feel heavy from all the baggage it carries, but that actually feels light because it’s simple truth. “I’m not not dating her for kicks. If there was a chance…” He has to force his mind away from the thought, like yanking a yo-yo back with a string. “But there’s not. You gotta trust that I know what I’m talking about here.”

Alex raises an eyebrow, almost two decades worth of “do I?” written all over his face, but it’s Willie who answers, sliding off his couch and toward his husband. “If you really don’t think it’s gonna happen, bro, obviously we respect that. But then maybe it’s time to move on?”

“How? She’s _everywhere_.”

Which is definitely Alex’s point, and the drummer’s jaw tenses for a moment, but then he sighs again. “You know Bobby’s moving back to LA?”

Luke groans. One of the songs off of Sunset Curve’s mini-album—Luke’s least favorite song, of course—recently got unexpectedly popular when it was used on some medical drama Luke will never watch. The label has been nudging them to do something bigger to capitalize on the popularity—a full album, something that they can potentially market as being made by a supergroup with the joint popularity of Trevor Wilson and the Phantoms. It’s not that Luke’s against it. He loves Sunset Curve, loves the sound and the genre and the idea of doing something a bit different. And there is something about Sunset Curve that feels like home… but it’s also feels like it belongs to an alternate universe version of Luke. A version of him that never met Julie. A version of him that he’s not terribly interested in becoming.

“I’m not ditching our band to get over Julie.”

Alex catches his gaze. “I’m not saying to ditch. But next time Julie’s working on Double Trouble stuff, maybe you throw yourself into Sunset Curve and… take some time away from home.”

Luke hates literally every part of that sentence, but he hates this conversation more. “I’ll think about it.”

“Or tell her how you feel.”

He’d rather eat burning coal, but anything to end this conversation. “I’ll think about it,” he repeats. 

His dismissive tone is clear, and Alex opens his mouth to argue the point, but his husband squeezes his hand. “That’s all we’re asking,” Willie says gently, more to Alex than Luke.

* * *

Voicing his feelings aloud to Willie and Alex makes them feel real in a way Luke never wanted, and as he drives back home that night, Alex’s words spin through his head on loop: _you’ve spent the last seven years making sure you have a front row seat to your own heartbreak._

Julie’s going to get a soulmate, and this perfect little world he’s carved out for himself will change, if not outright shatter, and maybe he should be preparing for that more.

There are two options: tell her and risk changing their relationship, or move on so he can preserve it. He lets his accumulated memories play through his mind—her sharing a mic with him, her grinning at him as she passes him her keyboard headphones, her clinging to him when Alto was injured, her running her fingers along his arm in the berth, her leaning close to him at the wedding… and for a single drive, he lets himself wonder if maybe telling her wouldn’t ruin everything. If maybe there’s something real and solid under those moments. Or if there isn’t, if the base of Luke and Julie is strong enough to withstand his one-sided love.

But then he lets himself into their apartment and stops short. Because she’s asleep on their couch in his Poison shirt with a thin blanket draped over her and both of the cats curled up on her lap, and he loses his breath. Apparently he leans back against the wall, because he feels the firmness against his shoulder blades, but all that exists for a moment is the peaceful, beautiful image of Julie sleeping and the cats taking unabashed comfort in her.

Her eyes blink open and, as they land on him, a lazy, brilliant smile fills her face. “Hey you,” she murmurs, voice soft with sleep.

“Hey,” he whispers back.

Their eyes linger on each other a bit too long, and the bond burns in his chest. There’s no way to prepare for her soulmate, to prepare for their lives to change. All he can do is try to memorize every moment he gets, and hope that he can fill himself with enough of these memories to sustain himself for the rest of his life.

Alto purrs at the sight of Luke, breaking the moment, and Julie scratches the cat’s head gently. “How was your exclusive preview of the wedding video?”

He shoves off the wall. “What, you jealous?”

“Obviously.”

He plops down on the coffee table in front of her, leaning forward to keep their voices hushed. Sure, they live alone, but there’s something about eleven pm that makes him feel like quiet is necessary.

Or maybe it’s just the doziness in her eyes, making him feel like he’s come home to her half-asleep in his bed, and boy are those feelings he does not want to dwell on.

“Don’t be. I was lured there under false pretenses. Wedding video won’t be ready for another two weeks.”

“False pretenses?” 

Fuck, he shouldn’t have said that. He spins one of his rings, focusing on how the light slides across it. “Uh, Alex wanted to lecture me about my life choices.”

She slowly places a shocked hand over her heart, trying to mimic offense without upsetting the cats on her lap. “And I wasn’t invited? I have lots of opinions on your life choices.”

“Yeah, like what?”

There’s a pause, a thousand microexpressions cycling across her face so quickly that he can’t read them, but she settles on, “You’re starting to get too old for the cut offs.”

“Fuck you, I’m 26.” Her face flickers for a moment, lips puckering at the mention of his age. The same look she wore on his actual birthday. He has no clearer idea now what that reaction means than he did then, but he shakes it off. “And you barely recognize me in sleeves.”

“Plus you would lose all motivation to go to the gym if you started covering those biceps.”

“You calling me vain?”

She giggles and opens her mouth, but then the giggle slips from her face and she bites her lip, swallowing whatever she was about to say.

Probably something flirty then.

Instead, she holds up her arms pitifully. “Prove those arms aren’t just for show. Carry me to my bed, please?”

He bursts out laughing. “Boss, c’mon. You can walk down the hallway.”

“I don’t want to disturb the cats.” She pouts up at him.

“Alto’s not gonna take well to flying,” he tries, as if he’s actually going to be able to say no to her.

“But Treble will. He’s lazy.”

“He _is_ your son,” he teases, leaning in more than he should.

“He’s your son too,” she shoots back, her breath wafting across his face.

Fuck, he’s gotten too close. So he scoops her up off the couch, trying to play off his proximity to her like it’s valid.

Alto flings himself off of Julie as soon as she’s airborne, but Treble stays rooted in place, head up, eyes wide, ears swiveling around frantically as Luke starts carrying them down the hallway. Julie bursts into giggles at Treble’s panic and buries her face into the left side of Luke’s chest, like she’s pouring happiness directly into his heart.

Yeahhh, he can’t tell her.

He calls Bobby in the morning.

* * *

After six years of keeping the whole soulmate thing secret, Luke would have expected a big, explosive reveal. But what actually happens is that Ray has an accident on set. Of course, Julie is the most thrown and takes indefinite leave from the band to take care of him. But the whole band is shaken. Probably Reggie most of all, but Luke is also very fond of Ray.

Luke has grown enough to admit that there’s a slight pettiness at the root of his fondness for Ray—when Julie’s dad came to Luke’s graduation dinner six years ago, the man warmly called him _mijo_ several times while exclusively referring to Nick very politely but not overly enthusiastically by name. But Ray also seems to be the only person in Luke’s life who is happy with Luke and Julie’s current relationship. There are no jokes, no teasing, no pushing, no knowing looks. Whenever he comes over to their apartment for dinner, and Luke and Julie descend into one of their banter spirals, Luke catches him watching them with a fond smile. And whenever he sees them off on their tours, Ray tells Julie gently but firmly to make sure she sleeps and eats and hydrates, and when she rolls her eyes and dismisses him, he always turns to Luke and says, “Make sure she sleeps and eats and hydrates?” And Luke nods and…

Maybe it’s small and meaningless, but he’s always appreciated how the man just accepts and understands their relationship without questioning it or trying to change it.

So Luke feels discombobulated—worried about Ray, and worried about Julie, because he knows she’s probably not taking care of herself right now, but he’s working on Sunset Curve like he promised Alex he would and she keeps insisting that she’s _fine_ and that she _wants_ him to work on Sunset Curve…

But Luke’s already stuck in his most frantic “comfort Julie at all costs” mode. And then she gets sad on her birthday of all days (and Luke is firmly against being sad on your birthday), and his brain shuts off in his desperation to make her feel better. Especially when she starts talking about her soulmate, because they’ve never really talked about soulmates, with the exception of that one very awkward conversation with their publicist when a journalist mistakenly reported that Luke and Julie were soulmates.

To be fair, Luke’s never tried to bring up soulmates around her, but he knows why _he’s_ always steered clear of the topic. He’s not sure why she doesn’t talk about it with him, especially because he knows she’s talked about it with Alex and Reggie. Maybe the vibe between them makes her feel weird about it, or maybe his heart eyes make her feel uncomfortable, or maybe—

The point is, he’s definitely never dwelled on the absence of soulmate conversations between them.

At all.

And now that it’s actually happening, at the worst possible time, he’s just desperately trying to comfort her without making an ass out of himself, which is a lot going on at once.

He’s trying not to look at her, because talking to her about her theoretical soulmate hurts so much that he doubts he’s in control of his face anymore. So his eyes are focused on Alto scampering back and forth on the other side of the glass balcony door when Julie asks in a small voice, “What if the sparks have already happened and I missed them?”

“You can’t miss them,” he offers gently.

“I know people _say_ that, but—"

He finally risks a glance at her, taking in the frustrated wrinkles in her brow and the way she hugs herself. Oh crap, she actually needs reassurance here. The words stumble out before he can stop them. “No, really. When it happened to me, I hadn’t slept in 48 hours, and I was drunk. Like, I was so out of it that a wrecking ball could have hit me and I wouldn’t have noticed. But when the sparks hit… woke me up, sobered me up, couldn’t think about anything else.”

Her body sways back as the wrinkles expand to take up her whole forehead and her eyes blink rapidly. Her face twitches, cycling through emotions so quickly that he can’t read any individual one, though he feels a faint undercurrent of tightness in the bond. Not pain, exactly, but an uncomfortable pressure. She takes a deep breath and asks, “You know who your soulmate is?”

His mouth drops open.

_Oh shit._

Six years, and this is how easily it comes out?

Crap, _and_ he told her he was drunk when it happened. That’s still only happened a handful of times, and it narrows down to one when coupled with the lack of sleep and _fuck_ why did he have to get so specific?

The shock hasn’t left her face, but her chin is rising in the stubborn way it does when she’s about to verbally fight someone. There’s no getting out of this. A heavy sigh slips out of his lips without his permission. “… yeah.”

“Who is it???”

He shrugs, trying to project an air of casual. “Doesn’t matter.” If he acts like it doesn’t, then maybe she’ll believe it’s not worth prying.

“What do you mean, it doesn’t matter??”

Never mind, that didn’t work at all. “The fact that they’re my soulmate doesn’t change much about our relationship,” he tries. And in many ways, it’s true. But as if to underscore that it’s also in many ways a lie, the pressure from the bond squeezes painfully around his heart, and he rubs the back of his head to try to deflect from the wince he can’t keep back.

“Are they in your life?”

All he can do is nod. He doesn’t want to lie to Julie. He doesn’t want to lie to anyone. His one mental defense against his decision to stay quiet about his soulmate is that he’s never directly lied. He’s just let assumptions do the work for him. Is it his fault that no one’s ever directly asked if he has a soulmate?

She bites her lip and her eyes roll off to the side, like she’s trying to come up with a list of everyone he knows, and he really needs to stop her from dwelling on this. Trying on a confidence he doesn’t feel, he catches her gaze. “Jules, seriously. It’s not a big deal. I learned who my soulmate was, there was no way in hell they were a romantic soulmate, and I figured out that they were a professional soulmate.”

He’d always assumed that if he ever told anyone about his soulmate, they would be respectful and reverent, but she _laughs._ “I’m sorry, _what_?”

“Like, a musical soulmate.”

“I don’t think that’s a thing.”

“It’s for sure a thing.” The way the bond explodes in his chest when they sing, the way it dances when they write. There’s no other type of soulmate it could be. Well… maybe the bond is more active when they sing “Finally Free” and “Can’t Help Falling in Love.” Maybe love songs make it act up more. (Oh how he wants to perform “Hollywood” with her again to see if the bond thinks it’s a love song.) But that doesn’t mean it’s romantic. Maybe the bond just gets extra charged by his feelings.

He eyes her face to see if she’s convinced, but she’s still got that determined set to her jaw. He rises unsteadily to his feet. “Not everyone wants a romantic relationship.”

“But you do.”

Unpleasantly reminded that Alex forcibly downloaded Tinder onto his phone during their last rehearsal, the phone in his back pocket feels like it’s burning. Like the unopened app is damning evidence of his eventual betrayal of his own heart. “Yeah, but my soulmate’s not it.”

A strange sound floats into the conversation. At first, Luke thinks that Julie is cackling, but her mouth is tense and closed. Oh. It’s coming from inside. From Alex and Reggie on the couch. As Julie’s eyes flick to them, Luke’s heart sinks. Crap, how long will he be able to keep this secret from them now?

His face must give something away, because she gasps. “Wait, _they_ don’t even know?”

“No one knows.” He widens his eyes, pleading with her to understand that this is private, that he can’t unpack this, not in front of everyone— 

But she’s not even looking at him, gesturing at their bandmates with barely contained outrage. “Can I—”

This is it, isn’t it? The death of his secret. Why did she have to be near tears on her _birthday?_ He sighs again. “Guess it’s inevitable.”

Julie flings open the door and beelines for their bandmates. Alto makes a move for the balcony, but not again, you slippery bastard. Luke slams the door shut and scoops him up. Immediately derailed by the possibility of affection, the cat curls up on Luke’s shoulder and begins to purr. Luke lets the gentle, innocent vibrations run through him, basking in the brief calm before the storm.

“Luke has a soulmate!” Julie announces.

With the subtlety of a sledgehammer, Alex and Reggie don’t look surprised. And then Alex makes things worse by gesturing at the balcony. “Just now?”

“No!” Luke cries. Maybe there’s still a way to salvage this and keep Julie from knowing.

The surprise on the guys’ faces is exactly what Luke expects. What he doesn’t really expect is the tinge of hurt. Of course. If he found out that Reggie was hiding his soulmate, Luke would be hurt that his brother hadn’t trusted him. But Luke had _reasons._

Looking a bit like cartoon fish, the guys’ mouths open and close repeatedly before Reggie finally forces out, “So you found out who your soulmate is before today and you never told us?”

“It’s not a big deal.” He widens his eyes at them, begging them to get it.

But they get it too well. Alex takes one look at Luke, the weight of that conversation from last year all over his face as he says (not asks—says), “Is it who we think it is?”

Luke casually strokes Alto’s head, all too aware of Julie’s eyes on him. “I dunno who you’re talking about.”

Alex’s eyebrow arches up dangerously. “Do you want me to start guessing names?” The silent, unspoken _It’s a very short list_ hangs between them as a threat.

“Okay, fine! Yeah.”

Reggie’s eyes bug. Fuck. Luke’s already handed Julie a roadmap to finding out when he got his sparks, and now the guys are being supremely obvious about who he got them for. Fuck, she’s going to find out. Fuck. Fuck. Fuck.

But while Reggie is staring at him, Alex is glaring, because… okay, maybe Luke didn’t _lie_ , but it’s technically a lie of omission.

Alex’s eyebrow falls, an angry edge to his voice as he asks, “Wait. How long have you known?”

Okay, not technically. A massive lie of omission.

Luke tries to shrug like he doesn’t remember. Like he doesn’t have the exact date etched into his brain. Alto meows loudly in his face—maybe protesting the lack of attention being paid to him, or maybe protesting Luke’s life choices—and wriggles out of his arms.

Is no one on Luke’s side here?

Reggie smacks Alex on the arm. “Duuude, do you remember that weird ass phone call about penguins?”

Fuck. How did he put that together?

Alex shakes his head, lip curling back as he does the mental math. He points a finger at Luke. “That was way too long ago. Please tell me Reggie is wrong.”

“What phone call?” Luke tries, realizing too late that his hand is rubbing the back of his head.

The drummer collapses forward, burying his face between his knees. “I thought I knew the extent of how terrible your decision-making was, but this?”

With a cheerful smile, Reggie pats Alex on the back. “This is truly the chef’s kiss of terrible decision-making.”

Excellent. Reggie is being ridiculous. Luke isn’t the only disaster here. He snorts, louder than he needs to. “Bro, that doesn’t mean anything—”

But Alex shoots back up, an indignant sneer on his face. “No no, you never get to criticize anyone. Ever again.”

The anger in his eyes is growing, and again, Luke gets it. He would be pissed too. But there are reasons. He tries to make a facial expression that says, “She’s my musical soulmate, this isn’t a big deal,” but it doesn’t seem like that sentiment can be communicated via face because Alex continues to look extremely angry.

Julie smacks Luke’s arm. “Who is it?”

“I’m not telling anyone.”

“They know!”

“But I didn’t _tell_ them.”

It’s an absolute ridiculous line of defense, and she’s absolutely not going to accept it. He tries to pull on big puppy dog eyes, but she’s always been pretty immune to those. She’s Julie Molina. Puppy dog eyes will never…

Her face softens, like she’s… letting it go? He has no idea why, but he’s absolutely gonna run with it. “C’mon, you gotta open your present.”

He nods at the huge wrapped box in the corner of their living room, the Kronos he’s been dying to see her unwrap for weeks now. As soon as Julie’s attention is off of them, Alex and Reggie bury themselves in their phones, texting with speed and fury. From the insistent buzzing against Luke’s butt, it’s definitely in their three-person group chat. Fuck.

As Julie sits down in front of the box and starts to unwrap the present, Alex and Reggie look up from their phones and nod aggressively toward Luke’s back pocket. Luke takes out his phone, refusing to read a single text on the lockscreen, and holds it up so they can see him shutting it down. Then he slips it back into his pocket and returns his attention to Julie.

* * *

“What in the actual fuck?” Alex snaps.

Luke shrugs as he bounces into their rented rehearsal studio. “Sorry I’m late. Phone was off, so I didn’t have an alarm—”

“Yeah, that’s why we’re mad. Because you’re ten minutes late to rehearsal,” Alex shoots back.

Reggie blinks. “Really? I thought we were mad because he lied about having a soulmate.”

Alex groans, exasperated, but Bobby’s head snaps up from where he’s finishing restringing his guitar. “What?”

“Luke found out who his soulmate is _six years ago_ and never told us,” Alex cuts out through a violent, unsmiling grin.

Bobby blinks rapidly, then returns to his guitar. “Julie, right?”

Okay, if everyone could stop pointing out how obvious Luke’s feelings are, that would be great.

Alex crosses his arms, clearly ready to launch into lecture-mode, but Reggie bursts out gleefully. “If you’re her soulmate, then she’s probably going to be yours! Non-mutual soulmates are super rare.”

“They’re not that rare,” Luke whispers to his feet. “And, uh. After six years, the odds that she’s gonna be my soulmate are basically zero.”

Reggie’s face falls and Alex’s crumples in pain. Luke doesn’t look at Bobby. He’s really hoping the rhythm guitarist is going to feel uncomfortable around Luke’s anguish and say something reasonable, like “let’s rehearse.” But he stays silent.

Which allows Alex to point out, “But you didn’t know that when you first found out.”

Luke sighs. “She’s my musical soulmate, okay?” Turning away from the conversation, he snaps his guitar case open and runs his fingers over the strings. Maybe his guitar needs to be restrung. Maybe he should go home and do that.

“Musical soulmate?” Reggie asks. “I didn’t know that was a thing.”

“It’s not,” Alex replies, knocking Luke’s guitar case closed. Luke yanks his fingers back, hissing in pain. But when he snaps his head up to yell at Alex, his friend’s face is soft and reassuring. With the wisdom of the only person in the room who has had his sparks, Alex says gently, “You don’t know what kind of soulmate she is.”

“I do. When we make music together…” Talking about the exact mechanisms of the bond is too uncomfortable. Like the difference between saying he’s in love and intimately describing the details of what that feels like. So Luke just punches himself in the middle of the chest and shoots Alex a meaningful look. Alex’s face sinks.

Reggie and Bobby look between the two of them, then shrug at each other. “Sparks people,” Bobby mutters.

“Wait, but why didn’t you tell Julie?” Reggie asks.

Luke plops himself down on the floor and leans his back against the couch. “She was dating that guy, so I didn’t want to make it weird by telling her when it didn’t matter. It doesn’t impact her. We’re not mutual soulmates. And we’re never gonna be.”

“You said the odds are basically zero. Not zero,” Alex points out.

Luke tugs his knees into his chest. “The odds have always been zero. It’s Julie. And it’s me. Why the hell would I ever be her soulmate?”

Alex sighs. “Is this the unpolished and teachable thing again?”

Not for the first time, Luke regrets that his immediate reaction when he read that damn audition review had been to rant to the guys about it. At the time, he’d tried to play it off like he didn’t care, but Alex had just looked steadily at him and raised an exhausted eyebrow like he was already anticipating the years of misery those two words would cause him.

But Luke doesn’t even have a chance to pretend, because Bobby sets his restrung guitar on his leg. “What thing?”

Reggie sighs as he collapses onto the studio couch behind Luke. “Luke read his audition review from back when he applied to USC.”

“Even though it was probably illegal for him to access those records and he hasn’t stopped pouting since,” Alex adds, dropping down next to Reggie.

Luke wraps his arms around his knees and buries his face in them, a flare of embarrassment running through him. Back in middle and high school, he and Bobby had always had a slightly competitive edge when it came to guitar. Unspoken, never overt or serious. But something about playing the same instrument had put them in the same arena in a way that they weren’t with Alex or Reggie. Childish competitions to master a technique more quickly, to learn about a new style first, to play a riff faster and more accurately. The closest Luke ever came to dick-measuring.

He thought he’d buried that with puberty, but that kick of shame in his gut says otherwise. He hates the idea of Bobby knowing that he’s—

“Teachable’s a good thing,” Bobby says.

“Nah, it’s not,” Luke admits. “It’s a condescending head pat. ‘You’ll get better after we hold your hand.’”

Bobby shakes his head. “No, they literally mean it as a compliment.” Before Luke can argue, he keeps going. “When I was at Jacobs,” Bobby hesitates for only a second, skipping his eyes away from Luke at the reminder of that old wound, “I was an intern for the admissions committee when they were doing auditions. Teachable was what they were looking for.”

Luke shakes his head, asking for clarification. Hardly daring to breathe.

Not really looking at Luke, Bobby tunes his guitar, plucking easily at the strings like he’s not simultaneously upending Luke’s entire understanding of the universe. “Okay, so like, you remember doing those trial lessons with faculty as part of the audition process?” Luke nods slowly. He’ll never forget the hour he spent with a guitar professor who had retired by the time Luke attended USC. An unassuming woman in her seventies who had spent thirty minutes completely shredding his confidence in his fingerpicking skills, and the next thirty minutes completely redefining his technique. Teaching him skills he still uses to this day, still associates with her laidback smile and nimble, weathered fingers.

“They’re not evaluating your musical skills. They’re trying to see how you respond to feedback. Some people get defensive or angry, and they won’t listen. Some people get so upset about not being perfect that they just shut down. And some people just… they’re cool with where they are, skills-wise, and they’re not super driven to improve. So there were a lot of people who auditioned who were great, but faculty didn’t want to admit them because they weren’t going to get much out of being there. Like, they’d kind of reached their musical ceiling? Basically already as great as they were ever going to be. Whereas other musicians, even if they weren’t as good initially, had the fire, drive, ability, whatever to improve. They were good, and they were gonna take everything out of those four years to make themselves even better.” Bobby nods at Luke. “And those were the code words they used on the internal forms. ‘Teachable’ for the ones who were going to become great, and uh... I forget the one for the ceiling ones.”

Luke stares at his knees, a reluctant smile tugging at his lips. “‘Naturally gifted?’”

Out of the corner of his eyes, Luke can see Alex’s head jerks towards him. Like he already knows whose review form said that.

Bobby snaps his fingers before quickly strumming all the strings on his now tuned guitar. “That’s the fucker.”

Reggie nudges Luke’s shoulder gleefully, like this has now taken care of all of his worries, but the barbed wire stabbing his musical ego has two prongs. “What about unpolished?” Luke asks.

Bobby snorts. “Dude, unpolished is our sound.”

“It’s not JatP’s sound.”

“And you sound polished in JatP.” Setting his guitar to the side, Bobby laughs. “And c’mon, dude. Those auditions were ten years ago. You’ve been playing for, what? Average of six hours a day every single day since then? Wouldn’t you be pissed if you weren’t a better guitarist by now? Wouldn’t it suck if you peaked at seventeen? Shit, dude, I hope I’m not at my peak _now_. A decade from now, I wanna be able to play runs I can’t land today. Don’t you want that?”

And he does. But there’s also part of Luke that can’t stand the idea that he’s not perfect today. He wants to be perfect already _and_ he wants to have the capacity to improve, and both of those things can’t co-exist. But… “Yeah, I guess I don’t want to be best guitarist I’ve ever been until the day I die.”

“There you go.” Bobby reaches for his guitar, like they’ve taken care of that issue now.

Reggie bursts into giggles. “Wow, we could have avoided a decade of Luke moping about this if only you’d gone to USC.”

Alex groans loudly and smacks Reggie on the arm. “Reg, can you please not pick at old wounds?”

“Whoops.”

Luke sighs and stretches his legs in front of him. As he sways his ankles back and forth, he mumbles, “Doesn’t matter. Even at my best, I’ve never been in the same universe as Julie.”

Reggie slides down onto the floor next to him. “Julie doesn’t think that.”

“What?”

“She always talks about you like you’re some kind of musical god. Julie respects the hell out of you.”

Luke’s heart squeezes. God, how has it been nine weeks since he’s made music with her?

Alex smirks and raises an eyebrow at Luke. “What’s it going to be, Luke? You going to disagree with Julie’s taste in music, or are you going to respect yourself?”

This whole unpolished and teachable reveal is already a lot for Luke to deal with, so he handles it the best he can—sticking his tongue out at them.

“Dude, you’re 27,” Bobby groans. “You can’t go around sticking your tongue out at people.”

Luke licks his finger and jumps to his feet. The rhythm guitarist scrambles out of wet willy range so quickly that he almost drops his guitar. “Jesus, dude. Again, you’re _27._ ”

Luke shrugs and grins. It seems like they’re finally out of this conversation. Thank god. “Are you guys ready to rehearse—”

“Oh no, I’m not done with you,” Alex snaps.

An actual whine comes out of Luke, like Alto when he feels like his dinner isn’t being given to him on time. But just as Luke’s trying to come up with something to say to deflect again, Alex says the one thing that stops him in his tracks.

“Julie seemed really sad when we were talking about your soulmate.”

Reggie bobs his head eagerly in agreement, but Luke can’t let his mind dwell on that. “I wasn’t looking at her.”

Alex groans. “The one fucking time you’re not looking at Julie."

“I don’t think it’s fair,” Reggie adds quietly. “She’s your soulmate. She should know.”

“It’s not her business. My soulmate, not hers.”

But Reggie shakes his head. “If she was off making herself miserable over you, you would hate that. You would want to know.”

And the truth of that punches Luke in the heart, but… “I’m not miserable.”

“Most of the time,” Reggie agrees. “But sometimes you are. And I think sometimes she is too.”

The whole band lets that quiet, painful idea sit there for just a moment before Reggie chirps, “Now let’s rehearse!”

Alex rolls his eyes at the rapid change of topic and tone, but maybe Reggie is onto something. Because Luke can dismiss a lot of other things that were said to him, because he’s used to tolerating his own misery. But the idea that Julie might be miserable? Even if only for a second? Especially because of him?

That sticks with him.

* * *

At the moment, Luke can’t really do anything with that worry. He leaves their apartment every morning before Julie wakes up so that he can hit the gym before rehearsal, and then he’s usually in the studio all day rehearsing and working on potential songs, and then in the evenings, he’s getting takeout and bashing his head against lyrics until his brain shuts off, and then driving home after she’s already in bed.

So he doesn’t see Julie for weeks.

And he knows that that was the point. Take time away from her and trying to start the process of moving on. But he doesn’t feel like he’s moving on. If anything, she’s in his mind even more than usual. In the past, when he spent the day with the guys, he could set Julie out of his mind because he knew he’d get to see her later. He doesn’t have that right now, so the Julie that sits in his brain is the only one he gets access to, and he can’t ever bring himself to send her away.

So there she is. Laughing when he overestimates his strength at the gym. Calmly suggesting that he step back in rehearsal and let Reggie and Alex’s voices shine more. Pointing out that his lyrics are leaning on trite metaphors. That his guitar riffs are stepping on the emotional moments of the songs. That he’s focusing on flash over heart. That he needs to sit still sometimes and let the song speak for itself. Even when he gets takeout, she’s there shaking her head at him. Laughing when he orders something too spicy, and affectionately muttering “white boy” under her breath.

He is not moving on.

Alex insists that that’s normal. “It’s like fighting off an illness. You’re gonna get worse before you get better.”

But Luke isn’t convinced. And Reggie doesn’t seem to be either.

It’s been several weeks since he’s seen her face when she sends him a selfie, her head hovering between a cuddling Alto and Treble. Alto’s ears are back and his eyes wide, a clear indication that she alarmed him by shoving her face between the cats and taking the picture.

It’s not like he forgot what she looked like, but it’s easy to think he’s exaggerating how beautiful she is when he’s not looking at her. Now he’s looking at her, and he’s reminded that he is _not_ exaggerating. And seeing her grinning at the camera specifically for him makes his heart feel like it’s melting into his ribcage.

Her follow-up text makes him smile even wider.

**Both the cats say hi, I know they miss you too**

**_is that a passenger lyric?_ **

**You listen to Passenger?? You’ve changed**

**_yeah i'm unrecognizable  
i sit still now  
for entire minutes at a time_ **

**Don’t believe it**

**_growing a beard_ **

**No!**

**_wearing sleeves_ **

**NO. Who are you?? What have you done with Luke???**

Switching his phone into selfie mode, he holds it out to get a picture of his clean-shaven face. He can’t get his bare shoulder into the shot without it looking weird, so he decides to lean into it, holding up his arm and flexing his bicep.

Out of the corner of his eye, he can see Bobby shooting him a bemused look, but whatever. He sends the selfie to Julie.

**_right here, babe_ **

**Never been so relieved to see that ridiculous face**

Alex catches him grinning at his phone and yanks it away. “Focus!”

But for the rest of the day, he can’t. Because she implied that she misses him, and now he’s thinking about her in their apartment with their cats missing him, and that gives him all sorts of feelings that—

“Um, dude?”

Reggie taps Luke’s journal with an amused grin. “I, um, I can’t play these runs. And even if I could, piano isn’t really Sunset Curve’s sound.”

Luke blinks down at his journal, almost surprised to find several lines of a scribbled piano part on the page that… yeah, make no sense for Sunset Curve.

“Oh fuck.”

He flips to a fresh page, but Reggie crouches in front of him and meets his eyes. “Dude, I know you don’t want to hear this, but I think you need to tell her. Cause you’re kinda unraveling.”

Luke rubs his face vigorously. “I’m not unraveling.”

Alex sits next to him, surprisingly gentle. “Did you really think you were going to be able to take this to your grave?”

“I have to,” he whispers.

Alex sighs so heavily that it trembles through the couch. “Why don’t you go home early today? Go see Julie.”

Luke isn’t going to admit that he all but sprints from the studio as soon as Alex says that. But he definitely does.

He comes home to find that she’s playing “Poison & Wine” on repeat, the way they do when they have writers’ block. When he pokes his head into the home studio, her eyes are closed and she’s just swaying back and forth, her face scrunched up and unexpectedly intense. And the part of his heart that’s been aching and frantic without her for the past few weeks relaxes into his chest with a purr at the sight of her.

He can’t stop himself from playing and singing with her.

It’s been several months since he’s performed with her, several months since he’s made music with the bond dancing and fizzling in his chest. Six years ago, he hated the way it acted up. Hated how distracting and overwhelming it could be. But now? It feels like home. Feels like music.

When he sits down next to her, she’s looking at his face like it’s brand new to her, and he feels a tug in the bond. Some overwhelming, joyful, confused emotion on her end that he doesn’t understand.

He almost kisses her.

But he’s almost kissed her a thousand times over the past eight years. If there’s one thing Luke Patterson knows how to do by now, it’s not kiss Julie Molina.

So instead they write. And the tension that’s been building within him every time he writes and plays without her finally eases.

When Luke gets to the studio the next morning, Bobby takes one look at his face and whistles.

“What?”

“One night seeing Julie, and you look human again.” Bobby grins, and Luke can’t keep back his own grin, even as he rolls his eyes at himself. But Alex rubs his hand down his face and sighs.

“Whaaaat?” Luke asks again.

“This has gotten beyond codependent, dude. I’m…” Alex doesn’t bother saying _worried._ They all hear it. “The universe needs to get its shit together and give Julie her sparks.”

But then he picks up his sticks and doesn’t say another word.

Luke writes a Sunset Curve song that day, no problem.

The band doesn’t talk about it again, but every few nights, the guys send Luke home early. And every time he comes home to his cats and his Julie, he feels that ache in his soul soothe.

* * *

In spite of how difficult it’s been to get back into the groove of Sunset Curve after so long, Luke is excited to do a test gig at Eats & Beats. In part because he’s itching to see how the new song will go over. In part because he’s curious about how performing without the bond will go. But in part, if he’s being honest, because he wants Julie’s opinion.

Not just on the song—though he desperately wants that. He’s not going to feel comfortable saying it’s a good song until Julie puts her stamp of approval on it. But also because… it’s been years since she’s watched him perform without being on stage next to him. Performing is one of the few times he really feels like he’s in his element. It’s not like he thinks she’s going to see him on stage and swoon, but he’s got his pride, he knows he’s good on stage, and he wants her to see it again. He’s not letting himself dwell on why.

Being on stage again feels weird. Without the bond, he’s able to jump around the way he used to, trying to burn off the excess energy that always builds up in him when he’s performing. When he’s part of JatP, he tries to keep himself calmer because he wants the crowd to be as focused on Julie as he is. She’s the frontwoman and she should own the show. (And also her presence on stage makes him feel like he’s being electrocuted, which makes jumping off the drum riser a bit difficult.)

But after so long, it feels unnatural. Julie takes center stage easily—just by existing, she’s the draw. Luke’s always having to run around and jump off of things and spin his guitar to feel half as effective and… god, he misses his frontwoman.

Halfway through the song, he gets thrown by something in the bond. He’s too distracted by being on stage to really analyze the emotions behind it, but he feels a tug and glances into the crowd in the direction the tug is coming from and spots Julie’s face and…

God, he forgot how good it feels to see her in the crowd watching him. He shoots her a wink, not letting himself overthink it, and then pulls his attention back to the stage as he throws his all into the end of the song.

* * *

The guys packing up in the green room after the gig are torturing him. It’s the only explanation for how slow they’re being. As soon as Luke snaps his guitar into its case, he bounces up and down.

“C’mon, hurry up, I wanna get Jules’s thoughts!”

Bobby snorts loudly. “How are you the ‘I love my wife’ guy when you aren’t even dating her?”

“You are!” Reggie giggles. “You have been since, what, junior year?”

“Sophomore year,” Alex corrects.

“Dudes!” Luke tosses a sweaty towel at them. But right now, with the high of the performance flying through his veins, he can’t even deny it.

He loves Julie Molina.

A thought he doesn’t normally let himself have.

It’s a truth he wears inside his heart. A truth he tortures himself with. But he doesn’t often just let himself acknowledge the sentence and the feeling.

So he lets himself think it, just for once.

_I love Julie Molina._

As Alex, Reggie, and Bobby spill into the hallway, he takes a moment to look in the mirror and swipe his sweaty hair back off his face. Hoping there’s something not completely unappealing about the aesthetic. 

Then he ducks into the hallway and he sees her. Protective baseball cap on her head, her iconic hair braided back so she’s less likely to get recognized. But aside from that, they could be back in college. Her waiting off stage to congratulate them. The rush and joy that always comes from Julie thinking he’s done a good job.

He prefers her on the stage next to him. But just as he loves greeting her after a Double Trouble gig, where he gets to be fully enthusiastic about what she’s done without any ego to it, there’s something in his delicate musician ego that loves knowing that she came to see him. That she’s waiting for him.

He can’t stop himself from picking her up and spinning her around.

And as she grins at him and gives her feedback, and then as the guys pack up Alex’s van, he can’t stop the tremulous beating of his heart, the nervous awareness of her eyes on him. She keeps shooting him looks that he can’t decipher, and there’s an itch in the bond that he doesn’t understand. Something is different, and he wants to ask, but it’ll have to wait for their car ride home.

So his heart sinks when he, Julie, Reggie, and Bobby round the corner at the end of the alley and find a small crowd waiting on the sidewalk.

A teenage boy jumps forward with a breathless grin. “You said you were Straight Daylight, but aren’t you Sunset Curve?”

Huh. He’s never been recognized as Sunset Curve before. He honestly wasn’t aware that the band had that kind of recognition yet.

It’s easy to keep to their usual ruse. Reggie shrugs coyly. “Sunset Curve? Never heard of them.”

Luke can’t keep back his grin. “They sound epic though.”

It doesn’t work. They’ve always been bad at subtle, and the teenage boy tugs Luke into the crowd. They’re suddenly surrounded by clamoring voices, and Luke wants to flee. He likes connecting with people through his music. But talking to them on some random sidewalk? It becomes about the idea of Sunset Curve instead of their music, and he hates that part of being in the business.

Before he can try to find a polite way to extricate himself, he’s nearly brought to his knees by a violent fizzle in his bond. A sensation he’s never felt before, and when the fizzling reaches his chest, it pops aggressively in his heart. Like something’s gotten disconnected, or hurt, or…

He spins around to find Julie. She’s staggering backward into a wall, eyes squeezed shut and her whole body trembling. His heart falls to his feet.

“Jules??”

Her eyes squint open and he shoves his way through the fans surrounding him as he sprints toward her.

“Julie, are you okay?”

She shudders violently, and he reaches her just in time to catch her arms. He tries to hold her upright, though his own body is shaking in fear. She won’t look at him, so he ducks his head to meet her gaze. “What’s going on? You sick?”

There’s a very long pause before she shakes her head.

“But you…” Another violent shiver runs through her and it suddenly clicks.

Oh.

Fuck.

Sparks.

She nods, which is when he realizes that he said all those words aloud. His mouth flubs open and closed as he tries to think of something to say. _Anything._

He’s thought about her getting her soulmate every damn day for the past six years. If he’s being honest, for the past seven. But he never thought he’d have to be there to witness his own heartbreak.

But this isn’t about him. This is about her. “Do you need me to get their name?” he asks gently. From the tremors running through her body, she’s in no state to have a conversation with a new person. But she blinks and shakes her head. “You sure? We don’t know how to find these people again.”

But then her voice croaks out a heart-stopping admission: “I already know my soulmate.”

His head twists to Reggie and Bobby without him even thinking about it.

Fuck. Of all the worst-case scenarios he could have imagined, he’d never considered that her soulmate might be someone he knew. What the actual fuck, universe?

Another shudder runs through her, snapping him back to his priority. He slips his arm around her waist and tugs her off the wall as gently as he possibly can. “Let’s get you home.”

* * *

Luke’s not really sure how he manages the drive back to their apartment. Julie’s basically curled up in a ball in the passengers’ seat, body occasionally jerking with her sparks and sending a jolt through the bond into him. Every jolt almost makes him flinch, and he grips the steering wheel tightly as he tries not to panic.

Reggie or Bobby.

Reggie or Bobby.

Reggie or Bobby.

Either way he’ll be happy for her.

No matter who it is. No matter how hard that is to watch.

So he tries to get her comfortable when they get back home, setting her up on the couch, and getting her a glass of water that she ignores, and getting Alto to sit on her lap.

Take care of Julie. That’s the priority.

But she looks absolutely wrecked. His sparks experience got obscured by alcohol and sleep-deprivation, so he’s not sure whether her reaction is normal, but he doesn’t remember Alex being this distraught when he got to the studio. She seems shaken to her core, and he doesn’t really know how to help her right now because _he’s_ shaken to _his_ core.

His body is still buzzing with that post-performance energy, so he paces back and forth across their living room. He’s going to be cool about this. He is going to be a good supportive friend, no matter how much this breaks his heart. He can do this, he can do this, he—

“Who are you, Alex? Why are you pacing?”

There’s moisture in his eyes. Fuck. He can’t look at her. “Because this is a huge deal. Who is it, Reggie or Bobby?”

“No.”

Relief hits him harder than he expected. Oh thank god. A stranger, at least. “Did you know someone in the crowd?”

“No.”

Oh god, is she trying to protect his feelings because she knows how he feels? He needs to stop pacing and start being casual.

Okay, feet, stop pacing.

His feet aren’t stopping.

“Jules, I’m not gonna judge. I’m happy for you. Who is it?”

An irritated snort pulls out of her mouth. “You know who it is.”

What? How on earth is he supposed to know when she’s given him no clues? “If the only people you knew were Reggie or Bobby…”

“ _Not_ the only people.” Her voice is unusually strained.

“But who—“ He pictures the fans on the pavement, the crowd pulling the three guys into—

Three.

Oh.

OH.

He stops short, all his energy now needed for his brain. “But that can’t…”

Everything around him feels fuzzy, and his knees weak, so he sinks onto the couch next to her. There’s a faint, faraway pressure on his lap that a very small part of his brain registers as Alto’s paws.

But only a small part.

The rest of his brain feels like it’s screaming. Because it can’t…

He’s spent six years constantly telling himself that he’s not her soulmate. That he won’t be. That he can’t be. Not Luke Unpolished Patterson.

But she seems to be saying… But that doesn’t make any _sense._

“Sorry,” Julie whispers.

What??

“Why are you _sorry?_ ”

“I promise I won’t make things weird.”

What??

“That’s not…” He finally pulls his eyes to her face, tracing over every precious inch of her. “Me?” A thousand things want to flood out of his mouth all at once, and he tries to sort through them, but his brain feels like a tire trying to drive through mud, stuck in place on one word: soulmate soulmate soulmate. But what kind of soulmate? He opens his mouth to ask, but Alto taps Luke’s hand insistently with his paw. On autopilot, Luke starts petting him, and something about the purrs in the silence makes the revelation feel slightly more real. Their cat is here, being almost offensively casual. Surely this can’t be a dream.

Julie tugs at a thread on her jeans, and her nervousness sticks in him. “I-I’m not asking you for anything. I’m not your soulmate, and that’s—” 

She thinks _he_ doesn’t want _her_? “You are.”

Her head jerks up, her mouth twitching a smile she doesn’t seem to believe enough to commit to yet. “What?” she breathes.

He waves the hand that isn’t petting Alto through the air, painting the memory in their living room. Reliving every unforgettable detail. “End of senior year, finals week. We were leaving some party and crossing Ellendale and I started thinking about how you weren’t gonna have time for us anymore after we graduated, and then suddenly…”

“Sparks.” She shifts closer, and the part of him that always clocks the space between them notices that it’s closer than they usually sit. “Why didn’t you tell me?” Her voice is mostly curious, but there’s a barb to it, and he’s reminded instantly of what Reggie said in rehearsal. _I don’t think it’s fair. She should know._

“You were dating Nick.” He focuses on Alto, hoping she won’t pick at it more. When she asks like that—simple and direct—he’s reminded that the answer is messy and complicated and wrapped in feelings that are hard to articulate.

(In the back of his mind, a voice that sounds like Alex’s hisses, “Don’t you mean ‘you didn’t have a single _valid_ reason?’”)

“Wait.” Her voice still sounds far away, like she’s trying to put together all the puzzle pieces before she decides whether or not this is real. “When you invited me to the band, it was your senior year, finals week, after a party, on Ellendale.”

Oh god. Obviously she remembers, because she wasn’t the drunk one, but it’s horrifying that he was so embarrassing that she remembers to that level of detail so many years later. “I knew I wasn’t gonna be your soulmate, and I needed you in my life. When the sparks happened, I figured you were my musical soulmate, and this was the universe telling me to ask you to join the band.”

Her face wrinkles up, like his certainty pains her. “You knew you weren’t going to be my soulmate?”

He shrugs. “You’re _Julie Molina._ Why the fuck would I be your soulmate?”

Her face cycles from disbelief to irritation to resignation, before her eyes meet him dead on. “Cause I think I’ve been in love with you for six years.”

But…

That’s not possible.

Soulmates, sure, but love?

She can’t—there’s no way.

“Hold up, what?”

“Give or take. I didn’t, like, set a notification on my iCal.” Her face twitches in a nervous smile, like… like she thinks she’s the one who’s more invested here.

He pulls himself across the couch, swallowing the space between them. Alto takes off with an indignant hop, but Luke ignores him, sliding his hand up to Julie’s cheek. At his touch, her whole face starts to light up. For him?

Holy shit.

“Seven years for me.”

It should feel like a bigger deal—the release of a secret he’s kept bottled up for seven years—but it slips out like an easy exhale.

A breathy, disbelieving giggle comes out of her, which she morphs into “Do you want a prize?”

But for once, he dodges the teasing and leans his forehead against hers. Their breath mixes, and his heart feels like it’s about to vibrate out of his chest, like it’s beating too much…

Because it is. Because there, on the other end of a bond left ignored and empty for so long, he can feel her heart beating. Like he held out his hand six years ago, and she’s just now slipping hers firmly and unflinchingly into his.

Her hand hovers over her heart. “How can I feel you?” she whispers.

The knowledge that she feels it too—that for the first time in six years, this big secret he’s been carrying alone is shared—makes him want to cry with joy. “Wait until the next time we sing together. It gets real intense. Honestly, it’s super distracting.” He drags his nose across hers, desperate to feel her skin against his, and his whole face tingles. A moment later, he registers a fluttering in their bond. A fluttering coming from her end.

Her forehead wrinkles up. “‘I got a spark in me, and you’re a part of me?’”

Maybe he should feel more sheepish, but he’s honestly just amazed that no one in the band has called him on it before. He knows there are fans who have been screaming about and overanalyzing that lyric. Knows it’s probably the reason for that fake-at-the-time-but-not-fake-anymore article about them. He runs a fingertip down her cheek, delighting in the feel of her soft skin. A part of him indeed. “Not my subtlest lyric.”

Her face crinkles up in anguish. “Seven years and you never told me?”

“I never thought…”

She all but rolls her eyes. “Luke, there was obviously a vibe.”

“But I didn’t just want you to vibe with me.” He lifts his other hand to her cheek, clutching her face. Has there ever been a more perfect sight in the universe than Julie Molina gazing at him with unabashed love and delight? An “I love you” pulls from his heart to his lips, but before he can voice it, Alto screams petulantly from the other side of the room.

“Shut up, Little Dude!” he and Julie snap, not taking their eyes off each other.

“What are we going to tell the boys?” she asks. Her voice is light, but he can hear the weight behind it. He knows, maybe better than everyone, how much baggage is attached to this relationship. How very complicated this could all be. Being soulmates doesn’t make anything easy or automatic. It’s just the universe rolling its eyes and yelling, “You belong in each other’s lives. Stop making bad choices.” The sparks can’t protect against everything.

But after eight years of knowing her, seven years of being in love with her, six years of her being his soulmate, he knows how solid the two of them are. And with the giddy, confident rush of the bond between them and the sheer unstoppable joy of the evening’s revelations, he finally feels the truth with unshakable, overdue clarity.

Romance can’t hurt their relationship. He defies anything to try.

Luke kisses her nose, and he has to choke back a sob. A kiss eight years in the making, but given so easily. “We are gonna tell them,” he kisses her cheek, “that I,” he kisses her jaw, “am so in love with you,” he kisses the corner of her mouth, “that I sometimes forget how to breathe when we sing together.”

She’s unnaturally still, like his words have made _her_ forget how to breathe, and something deep inside his chest all but purrs at the effect he’s had on her without their lips even meeting. Speaking of… He flickers his gaze to her lips. For the first time in all the years he’s known her, he lets himself really look at them knowing that he’ll soon know what they feel like. Not looking at them to be suggestive or to mope, but to ask for permission.

Her lips curl up in a smirk. “They’re cats—I don’t think they’re going to care.”

He huffs out a frustrated laugh. “You gonna stop mocking me for five seconds so I can kiss you? Kinda been waiting seven years for this.”

She leans in even closer, her lips brushing against his as she replies, “I would have kissed you seven years ago. You were the one who decided to wait.”

It’s meant to be banter, but the revelation hits him in the heart. Joy that he hasn’t been alone with these feelings mixes with frustration that they waited so damn long.

But honestly? They happened as they were meant to, and he doesn’t regret a second.

She huffs impatiently and captures his lips with hers.

He’s never really allowed himself to dwell on what kissing her would be like—that had always felt too dangerous. But if he had, he would have assumed that their first kiss would be epic and romantic and passionate. 

In reality, she’s grinning against his lips in a way that makes his heart melt, and he sighs as soon as her mouth touches his, and nothing’s really aligned right. But after a moment, he can barely pay attention to the flaws in their kissing technique because the bond is going wild between them—burning in a way that’s simultaneously passionate and comforting, fierce and gentle, serious and joyful. With her bond active, it actually finally feels like a proper circuit. He can feel her emotions—her happiness, her desire, her giddiness—feeding into the bond from the other end, and all of their emotions swirl together in an overwhelming storm in his chest.

The only reason he can keep any part of his mind on the kiss itself is that he’s had practice tolerating the bond for the past six years. Julie hasn’t, and she melts back onto the couch, soft and boneless under him. He carefully braces himself over her, sliding his eyes open to take in the sight of her spread underneath him, almost incapacitated with bliss.

He did that? Fuck.

She pulls her lips away, gasping for air, and blinks her eyes open. As they roll over his face, a breathy giggle escapes her.

Is he dreaming? He’s gotta be dreaming.

He brushes an errant curl off of her face. “We should probably also warn the boys that we’re gonna lock them out of our rooms sometimes.”

“They’re gonna hate that.” But her grin is completely unapologetic.

“Tough shit. Sometimes we deserve privacy.”

With a disapproving meep, Alto leaps onto Luke’s back. The feeling of the tiny, entitled paws prancing around on his back draws a giggle out of him, which he tries to bury in the soft skin of her neck.

“Speaking of…” Her voice tilts suggestively as she gently shoos away the cat.

He captures the smooth skin under her chin between his lips and tugs gently at it. Her hand weaves into his hair, holding him close as she gasps softly. Smirking against her neck, he continues the trail of kisses, making them progressively deeper and longer, until his open mouth is on her collarbone, sucking a bruise into it as she wriggles under him.

He noses the strap of her tank top and manages to gasp out, “You wanna come back to my place?”

“It’s right down the hall, so sure.” Her voice is aiming for sass, but it’s too breathless and light, and every part of him tingles.

He leaps to his feet and holds out his hand. She grabs it without hesitation, and his side of the bond—the side ignored for so long—almost sighs in relief.

As he tugs her into the hallway, he spins around and wraps her in his arms. Like he’s Orpheus and she’ll vanish if he doesn’t look back at her.

Wait, the opposite.

Whatever, he wasn’t a Classics major. He doesn’t give a shit. Point is, he never wants to stop looking at Julie Molina, especially when she’s glowing up at him like that.

He lets out a breathy chuckle. Is he dreaming?

“Am I dreaming?” she asks.

And something about the way her disbelief and uncertainty and longing mirrors his makes his own worries easier to dismiss.

He catches her mouth in a short, fiery kiss, sucking on her lower lip with a bruising pressure. The bond between them burns so fiercely that they have to pull apart to catch a breath, both ends of the bond continuing to tingle.

“Does that feel like you’re dreaming?” he murmurs.

A smirk pulls at the corner of her mouth. “Not sure. Kiss me again?”

He chuckles and leans back in to her as he spins them down the hallway toward his room. “You’re the boss.”

* * *

It takes twelve hours for them to drag themselves from his room and into their home studio to sing together. Julie’s wearing his Yardbirds cutoff and his USC mesh gym shorts and… he’s seen her in his clothes before, but it’s never felt purposeful like this. It’s never meant what it means now, and he can’t stop grinning every time he looks at her. Especially when he catches her tugging on the shirt and smiling to herself.

(The cats, meanwhile, are cuddled up on Luke’s soft case. Treble glowers at Luke, clearly irritated with him for taking up Julie’s attention. But then Alto begins to groom his face, and the glower slips into a contented purr.)

“Let’s do ‘Bright,’” Luke suggests as he grabs his acoustic from its stand.

“Not ‘Free’?” Julie teases.

“For your first time? Nah, you gotta work your way up to ‘Free.’” Normally he would try to keep the cockiness in his voice to a minimum, but he’s fucking earned this.

She rolls her eyes at him, but then sits at her Kronos and turns it on.

“Start with the second chorus,” he suggests. “Without vocals.”

She shoots him a look, like she thinks he’s exaggerating, but then they start to play.

A sharp breath inhales through her lips, and she leans away from the keyboard even as she continues to play. As if distance will ease the pressure.

He’s not immune to the jolts that run through the bond, and the sensations _are_ new and different. He can actually feel that some of the jolts have a different energy, and that they’re feeding from him into her instead of the other way around.

But he’s endured singing an acoustic version of “Finally Free” as a duet in a stadium, where each pair of watching eyes felt like it added an extra charge to their bond.

This, he can handle.

The next part is harder, when they begin singing and their voices blend. The bond rushes into him like a shot of adrenaline, spiking through his veins. But before he can even properly register the effects, her voice gasps into silence. Her hand slips to her chest as she pants for air, and her whole body shivers before she gives up on sitting entirely and slides down onto the floor. Lying flat on the ground, she stares up at the ceiling to regain her breath.

She rotates her head to take in the sight of him still standing. “What the fuck?”

Chuckling, he sets his guitar on the stand and eases himself to the floor, resting his back against the wall. “You’ll get used to it.”

“ _Used_ to it? It doesn’t get better?”

“I mean… it gets better like running gets better the more you do it.”

Julie’s face shrivels up in horror.

“You’ll do fine, babe,” he assures her.

The horror vanishes from her face. “You can’t call me that anymore. Because now you mean it, since I’m your…”

There really isn’t a word that captures it, is there? He grins softly at her. “Girlfriend?”

It’s not a big enough word, but it still brings a giant grin to her face, and she nods.

“You’ll do fine, boss,” he corrects.

He reaches out a hand to her and tugs her over to him. She instantly scrambles into his lap, knees resting on the floor on either side of his hips.

Her eyes caress his face as she rubs her chest. “How have you just… performed through all that for six years?”

He shrugs. “I’ve had a lot of practice.”

“Cause you’re teachable.” She glows as she says the word.

“I regret telling you about that.” Maybe middle-of-the-night Luke should have been a little less honest about all the embarrassing thoughts and feelings he’s dwelled on for the past several years. But then he looks into her teasing grin and… no. This feels right. Her knowing all the sad, dark turns of his mind, and being able to hold them with him.

She runs a hand down his face, smile slipping off for a second. “I hate that you were pining for seven years. I wish—”

He catches her hand and presses a kiss to it. “Don’t be. I love what we’ve built. I don’t regret anything it took to get us here.”

“But I feel like I should have been pining more. Solidarity.”

“I don’t want you to have pined for years. Pining sucked.”

“You just said you don’t regret it.”

“And I don’t. But it still sucked sometimes.” She slides her fingers between his and pulls their joint hands up to cup her cheek. His smile breaks through, and her grin answers the call of his joy. “You said six years.”

She rolls her eyes at him. “And I stand by that number. I was… You know when you’re trying not to think about something? Like, trying really hard? I’ve spent six years actively not letting myself think about how I feel about you.”

“How can you know how long you _weren’t_ thinking about it?”

A shy smile huffs out from her lips, and she points at the small, but growing wall of tour shirts, her finger lingering on the first one in the line. “It got a lot harder to not think about after that.” She slides her gaze back to him. “If you hadn’t given that to me when I was… distracted, I would have known six years ago.”

He rests his hands gently on her waist and squeezes. “I gave it to you at the right time.”

Running her hand down the side of his face, her nose scrunches up in happiness. She leans in and rubs her nose against his before pressing her lips gently against the tip of his nose. “You should have seen Flynn’s face when I showed her the shirt. She, um… She definitely knew, even if I didn’t.”

“Oh really?” Sue him. He doesn’t want Julie to have suffered in any way, but if there _are_ pining stories that exist, he definitely wants to hear about them.

She scrunches up her face again, this time in defiance. “I’m not telling you embarrassing stories about people making fun of how oblivious I’ve been.”

“ _People?_ Plural?”

She closes her eyes, as if he can’t question her if she’s not looking at him. No way he’s letting her get off that easily. He reaches into the pocket of her shorts, pulls out her phone, and presses it into her hands.

“What?” she asks.

“Isn’t there anyone you want to tell?” He tries for innocent, but she immediately sees through it.

“I don’t want to get the same reaction you did. I want people to be happy for us, not gloating.”

The word instantly perks him up. “Ooh, who’s gonna gloat?” She purses her lips, but he ducks his face to pout next to her phone. “C’mon, you saw how the guys have been talking to me for eight years.”

“You said eight was an exaggeration.”

He peppers her face with kisses, sending her into a flurry of giggles.

“Seven _years_ of pining. Think of my suffering. I deserve to see gloating.”

Pouting reluctantly at him, she shoots off two identical and vague “I got the sparks last night” text messages. One to Flynn and one to…

“Your dad?” He can’t keep the grin off his face, and she giggles at it. “Wait, does your dad support this??”

She tilts the screen towards him in answer, letting him read along.

_**Dad: Obviously I’m happy for you no matter who your soulmate is** _

_Julie: You were right_

_**Dad: ¡Gracias a dios!** _

_Julie: You said you didn’t have a preference!_

_**Dad: Between a random stranger and the man I’ve watched love, respect, support, and treasure you for years?  
Come now** _

Seeing how easily her father read him is disorienting and wonderful. But also infuriating.

“How did your _dad_ know how I felt and you didn’t?”

She levels him with a look. “Do you need to re-read the Sunset Curve texts again?”

“Point taken.” He runs his eyes over the conversation again, lingering on the “treasure.” “How long has he been…”

She nods her head at the Petal Pushers shirt. “He thought we were dating. He full-on laughed at me when I said it was just a nice present.”

Luke chuckles, but his gut pauses on the implication. Oh god, has everyone been reading that as some romantic overture for years? “It _was_ just supposed to be a nice present.”

She traces the back of her hand down his face and presses a gentle, lingering kiss to his temple. “I know.”

Then he sees the text notification pop up from Flynn.

_**Flynn: i’m super happy for you but what the fuck kind of text is that??? DETAILS, GIRL** _

_Julie: Luke  
And I’m his soulmate_

_**Flynn: i really wish this was an in-person conversation cause i have been practicing my fake shock face for years  
i’m about to flood your phone with happy emojis but first i wanna remind you real quick of this quote from sophomore year julie  
“luke’s just an annoying flirt, he’s not a real option, he’s not sticking around”** _

Julie immediately closes the phone and hides it back in her pocket, but the damage is done.

“ _‘Annoying flirt?’_ ”

Julie tips her hair forward, trying to get her curls to cover her face. “I was trying to get her off of my back because she wasn’t supporting the Nick thing,” she mumbles.

He gathers up her hair and slides it behind her shoulders, revealing her face. “Yeah, can I be honest? I didn’t support the Nick thing.” He slips his hands under her shorts, resting them midway up her thighs and squeezing gently to draw her face up. “Annoying?”

She rests her forehead against his. “You did _not_ have an off-switch. You still don’t. I’ve just learned some tricks.” 

“What kinda tricks?”

She slides her mouth over his and strokes his chin to tease his mouth open. The surge of joy that flows from both ends of the soulmate bond and meets in the middle crashes over him like a wave. When she leans back, he has to take a moment to remember how to breathe.

“Not fair,” he gasps. She strokes her thumb down his cheek and scrunches her nose gleefully. When he finally collects his breath, he smirks. “Is that any way to treat the man who treasures you?”

“It was a good thing. I wasn’t ready for this back then.” She rests her hand on his chest, right over where the bond connects to him, and smiles to herself.

“Ready for what?”

“Ready to risk something this important. And ready to…” She trails off and eyes him, clearly debating something. But before she can decide or he can ask, her phone beeps repeatedly. She pulls it out of her pocket to silence it, but then grins.

“What?”

She turns the phone around.

 _ **Flynn:**_ 🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊  
🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊  
🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊  
🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊  
🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊  
🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊  
🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊  
🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊  
🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊🎉🥳🍾🎆🎊

Before Julie can turn it back, another text chimes in:

_**sooo when’s the wedding???** _

He instantly tugs the phone out of her hands so he can type a response.

“What did she say?” Julie asks, trying to peer at the phone. But he shields the top of the screen with his free hand, and the way she sighs but lets him keep typing makes his heart wriggle. She trusts him that much.

When he’s done typing, he hands the phone to her to show her his proposed answer. He tries to conceal the nerves from his face, but… well, she can probably feel it through the bond.

_Not getting married, but assume we’re getting a domestic partnership inappropriately soon. Just waiting for you to get back to this hemisphere so we can all go to the secretary of state’s office and file for it._

Julie keeps her eyes locked on the screen, glistening in the blue light. For a second, he worries that he went too far, but she hits the send button without making any edits and tosses the phone to the side as she rests her forehead against his.

“I wasn’t ready to be in the last relationship of my life,” she clarifies. “And I think some part of me knew that that was what you were going to be.”

The melting sensation in his chest is all his heart, not the bond. “Even though I was an annoying flirt?”

“Are you never going to let that go?”

“Probably not.” He kisses the corner of her mouth. “It’s fine. Grew out of it eventually. It’s the one thing I have going for me. I’ve been told I’m teachable.” He slides his hand up the back of her neck, cupping her head and drawing her closer.

Her laugh echoes in the space between them. “Funny. You know how I’d describe you?”

“How?”

She grins—soft, shy, directly into his heart and their soulmate bond. “Stellar.”

And who is he to argue with that?

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Shoutout to [smol_fangirl](https://archiveofourown.org/users/smol_fangirl/pseuds/smol_fangirl) for suggesting [this video](https://pearlcaddy.tumblr.com/post/644232708470505472) for the fic.
> 
> if you're a tumblr person, you can find me [there!](https://pearlcaddy.tumblr.com/)
> 
> Music references:  
> • “Finally Free”  
> • “A Kiss to Build a Dream On” by Louis Armstrong (I prefer the Single Version)  
> • “Can’t Help Falling in Love” by Elvis (I couldn’t actually find a version that captured what I wanted, so Elvis works)  
> • “Sword from the Stone” by Passenger


End file.
